The 61st Victor
by Two Telescope Eyes
Summary: What if a tribute had something the Capitol wanted? Would they rig the Hunger Games? Why wouldn't they? This is the story of the 61st victor, a District 7 tribute who discovers that the odds are more towards her favor than she thinks. ::Please R
1. Chapter 1

**A/N:**  
Oh my gosh! You clicked it!  
Hello readers!  
So, some more info you should know: This fanfiction is sort of a spin-off prequel to the Hunger Games series, taking place in the same world with many of the original characters (that I do not own!) but most of the characters in this are my own OCs. Suzanne Collins did not give much information about previous Games or tributes, so I took some liberties here, so _nothing in this story is necessarily true to the books._  
Hope you like it and please review! ^_^

~1~

I was only four years old when I faced death for the first time. It was a Saturday and other young children and I were busy keeping the forest trail clear of fallen branches. Men and women worked with axes and saws all around us.

It was all because the lumber workers had overlooked the nest of tracker-jackers, high in the pine. When the tree came down, they all saw the nest spit open, but it was too late. The golden wasps engulfed the workers, unforgiving and deadly. Several lives were lost that day, but somehow, a little girl with more stings than she could count, outlived even the strongest axeman.

No one could say how it happened. It must have been luck that after several days on the deathbed with stingers poking out every which-way on my soft baby skin, after all the swelling subsided and the hallucinations vanished, I developed an immunity.

Later I would be moving logs when honey bees, who sometimes live in the trees we chop down, would stab me with their stingers, and I wouldn't even flinch.

This immunity was the luckiest thing that ever happened to me. It make me fearless. Stings usually brought only pain and sickness to people, but to me it opened a window. I took a liking to honey bees, and often followed them back to their hives and watched them for hours. One day, I cut a branch that held a medium-sided hive and carried it all the way home and hung it up in a tree in my back yard. Needless to say, my sister, Iris, who was nearly 11 years my senior and taking care of me at the time, was not happy about it. She was happy about the honey, though. And the money from the precious sweet helped us eat through the winter.

At first, the bees and the hornets and the wasps that lived in our thickly wooded district were annoyed by my presence and tried to sting me, but eventually they stopped stinging me entirely.

However, common sense kept me away from tracker-jackers; they were a danger to everyone in the vicinity if disturbed. But when I was thirteen or so, there was another incident, similar to the one when I was four. We had been better trained since, and no one died this time, but I discovered that the genetically enhanced wasps didn't effect me. The didn't even bother with me-just zoomed right buy.

"Fern," Iris would say. "You are the luckiest girl in District Seven." But then she would always add, playfully poking me in the stomach, "That still doesn't mean you can bring your bees into the house, missy." To which I would always laugh.

Lucky indeed.

~.~

It's Reaping Day, and I don't feel very lucky.

I look at myself in the mirror, my friend May stands beside me, so nervous her skin has a green hue to it. The color doesn't go well with her dress.

"Fern," she says for the thousandth time, voice trembling. "I don't want it to be me."

I look at her, standing in my sister's bathroom in a silky dark green summer dress, her auburn hair all curled for the occasion. Then I muster a sympathetic look for the thousandth time and reply, "You won't. There are thousands of people who could be chosen over you."

She gives me a watery smile. "You're so nice, Fern."

"You are too," I say. May was always a little faint of heart. I tended to be the guts in our friendship. I look back at my reflection. I've left my hair down, and the wispy brown strands brush my bare shoulders. The dress belongs to Iris, and it's made from peach colored cotton. It's probably the most girly thing I've worn since I was little. Working as a lumberer, I preferred thick pants and shirts that never stay very clean. Iris hasn't worked since my niece, Mimsey, was born, so she has time for dresses.

"No, no, that's not what I meant," May looks like she's about to cry. Her voice shakes. "Fern, you're _really_ kind. You're the nicest person I've met and I'm so glad you're my friend."

"Okay, May."

She's grabbed my arm and I gently pull away. May always gets weird like this on Reaping Day. Like it's the last time she'll ever get to see me. Like everyone she loves is going to die if she doesn't cling to them tightly enough.

"You look very pretty," May says quietly, and withdraws.

I promise May I'll meet her in the square when 10'o'clock arrives. She leaves and I join my sister and her family for breakfast. Well...my family.

I can't remember my parents, my father who fell victim to a mill fire, my mother to childbirth. Iris has been taking care of me for as long as I can remember, and her husband, Clave, became a sort of father stand-in for me. And Mimsey...I loved Mimsey. Only five years old and already talks up a storm to anyone who will listen. She makes up stories, she sings, she lies and jokes. And she loves my bees. She named every single one she saw for an entire day, sitting in our back yard with wrapped attention. The honey bees buzzed around her curiously and she was unafraid.

What a strange little child.

"Just like her aunt Fern!" Iris had said on more than one occasion. "Lets hope she has some of your luck too, eh?"

Today, the kitchen is clean, and the table is scrubbed. Hot acorn-flour pancakes steam on a plate in the center.

In District 7 we are luckier than most. The forest grows all around us, supplying ample amount of wild edibles when staple food is scarce. I know hundreds of plants that can keep my family alive, even in winter. And then there's the small amount of honey my bees let me have, which can buy more than enough of anything here. Hunting is, of course, forbidden, but some do anyway, scrounging up what little game is not scared away by our constant mill noises. I know starvation happens. Everyone knows what hunger feels like. It's just luck.

"Fern! We get honey today!" Mimsey says happily, dipping a slice of pancake into the stuff. She's gotten some of it in her sandy curls. Sandy like her father's, not like my sister's and mine.

I give Iris a quizzical look. We usually sell all the honey to the rich town folk. Eating it ourselves is rare. Iris just shrugs a little and says, "It's Reaping Day."

Like I needed to be reminded of the Hunger Games. I may hide it well, but I was terrified. Terrified of what would happen to my family if I was chosen, with all my knowledge of the plants and the bees going with me. And worse, all I could think about was little Mimsey, one day, faced with the same threat every twelve to eighteen-year-old faced yearly. Of going into an arena and never coming back.

Clave sits next to me. He doesn't say anything, just takes one of my hands in his warm, calloused ones and gives it a squeeze. It's all I need.

~.~

I walk to the square where a massive crowd has formed. Worried family members stand around roped-off sections where their children are clustered. Before I leave to find May, I get down to Mimsey level and look her in her eyes. The girl's been holding my hand for the past half-hour and has not let go.

"Hey, don't worry," I say, but I can see in her face my words are meaningless to her. All I can do is smile reassuringly and gently poke her in the stomach. "See you soon, honeybee." And I leave her with her parents and the anxiety etched into her features.

I walk to the roped off section for seventeen-year-olds, set near the front of the stage erected in the square by the Capitol people. I find May, and we stand with all the other seventeen-year-old girls of District 7. I'm below average-size wise-for my age. Most of these girls are taller than me, but if I stand on tip-toe I can see a good chunk of the stage between the heads of the eighteen-year-olds in the area in the front. Near a podium stands our District Mayor, Eugenia Gates. Her short, sand-colored hair pinned up, she is dressed in a plain gray suit, contrasting sharply with the brightly colored man who stands next to her: Merlin Meyers, the District 7 escort. Straight from the Capitol, he wears a suit that looks like the cosmos. Pink, red, and orange galaxies like ones I've seen in textbooks at school shimmer every time he moves. He's bald, but his eyebrows are enormous, dyed electric blue and so fluffy he must tease them a hundred times a day. I wonder if Capitol people feel as out of place as they look in the districts.

Behind them sits our handful of past Hunger Games victors, one elderly woman and five men, the youngest is 30 or so. You're no longer eligible for the Games by the time you're nineteen, so it's been a while since we've had a victor.

There's a hush that takes over the crowd as our mayor nods to a Capitol camera crew and wearily takes the podium. There's the customary intro to the Games Gates gives every year. It's almost like I know it by heart, so I don't really pay attention. I look at May who is barely holding it together. She's got a bunch of little sisters-two of them somewhere in the crowd of teenagers along with us, waiting with bated breath. No one is talking, the faces of the girls around me are stony. Only two more years of this for us seventeen-year-olds, thank goodness.

When Gates finishes her mandatory recap of the Games, she steps back and Merlin Meyers jumps forward eagerly.

"Heeeeeello my fine friendly friends of District Seven! It's Merlin here-Did'cha miss me?" He leans his ear towards the crowd, as if waiting for a "Of course we did, Merlin!" But no one says a word. His Capitol intonations sound brash and foreign here. Nevertheless, he continues, unaffected by our silence. "I know you're all just _dying_ to know which of you are lucky enough to go to the Capitol, _hmmmm_?" He leans towards the crowd again, which remains quiet.

"Die in a hole." A girl near me looks darkly up at the stage. I don't really know her but I recognize her face from last year. It was broadcasted across all of Panem. Last year her little brother was a District 7 tribute. He was only twelve years old and one of the first to die in the bloodbath that usually opened the Games. Capitol camera crews always come back to film the grieving families. It's quite awful, really. The last thing anyone wants after losing a loved one is to have the people who are responsible for it stick a microphone in your face and ask how you feel about it.

It made me hate everything about the Capitol.

I look back to the stage, and my stomach plummets. Merlin is moving towards the two giant glass bowls at the front of the stage and I know it's time for the drawing.

"Soooo, who shall go first this year?" Merlin asks the crowd enthusiastically. His eyebrows bounce a little on his forehead.

_Why does he even try?_ I think to myself. Every year Merlin tries and fails to engage a clearly disapproving audience. Best thing for him to do is to just read the names and leave. Instead, he's got a district full of people silently wishing for his demise with every exaggerated word that leaves his mouth.

"Girls, then!" Merlin's voice booms over the crowd and then he is digging into the bowl of girls names and pulling out a slip. The slip with the name of the tribute on it. The name.

And my world ends as I hear that name echo off the buildings and around the people of District 7.

Because it's mine.


	2. Chapter 2

**A/N:** Hooray! A second chapter! Remember to please review, thanks!

~2~

"Nooo!" I register a strangled cry, but it's not mine. It's May's. She grabs hold of my arm and starts to sob. Cameras swivel as they try to find me in the crowd.

I can't think. I've become paralyzed. My mind is a deep dark hole.

Merlin Meyers didn't just say my name. It wasn't possible. I imagined it.

But I didn't.

Like a sleepwalker I pull away from May's grasp. It has gone quiet, like the moment when the wood saws cease their roar, and I panic, wondering if deafness went along with this new found paralysis. But then I hear murmuring, concerned whispers of "not Fern...never Fern", a muffled cry of a five-year-old girl.

I walk to the stage, every camera trained on my face. I realize that every single person in the Capitol is going to be evaluating me as I take the shaky steps up to the podium. I see the faces of our victors, sober and haunted, and the face of Merlin, grinning with polished teeth. He reaches out to me and puts a hand on my shoulder.

"There's a trouper!" He says gleefully. "You are Fern Riley, yes? No imposers this year, right?"

_Was that supposed to be a joke? _I swallow back a tremor. "That's me," I say.

"Well, of course it's you!" Merlin turned to the crowd, arms wide. "Will there be any volunteers to take the place of this young lady?"

No one moves, and I don't expect them too. I wouldn't ask any of these people to die for me.

Merlin continues as if he didn't expect any volunteers either. "Well then, we all know what's next!" And he moves to the second bowl and all I can think is, _Please let me not know him, please._

"The District Seven boy tribute is..." Merlin pauses for effect as the crowd holds their breath. "Rowan Bickford!"

I let out a tiny sigh of relief because the name is unfamiliar. Cameras swivel. The whole of Panem watches as the skinny boy emerges from the section for thirteen-year-olds. He holds himself as he approaches the stage, as if the warm afternoon had become suddenly chill. Or maybe he was holding himself together.

I could tell that Rowan Bickford came from a rougher part of District 7, where jobs were as scarce as food. When he reached the stage and Merlin shook his hand, I saw how bony his hand was. He was slightly taller than me although I was four years older, but though his baggy button-down shirt hid it well, I could see he was painfully skinny, his short black hair tinged with red.

There are no volunteers for Rowan, and he stands next to me as Gates reads the Treaty of Treason (also customary). The boy is shaking and trying to hide it. I want to put my hand on his shoulder or do something to comfort him, but I can't. I'm barely holding it together. There's a lump in my throat I'm desperately trying to keep down. When the mayor is done, Rowan and I have to shake hands. I extend mine numbly, and I feel his cold fingers. I look at his face but he's avoiding my eyes. And then he lets go and the anthem fills the emptiness in my head.

~.~

My family tries to hold it together for my sake. I sit in the mayor's house as it's custom for goodbyes. I'm tense and my back is aching. I'm so strung up that I feel like any second I'm going to collapse on the ground and wail. I feel hollow, like my mind really hasn't registered what has happened. That I'm going to the Games. That I'm going to die.

"I brought you this," Iris says quietly. She has something in her hand that she's holding out to me. I automatically reach for it. A thin golden chain slips into my open palm. I recognize this necklace. They had bought it for me on my first reaping day when I was twelve. It was so precious to me that I didn't dare wear it for fear of losing it, but kept it safe in my dresser. I now look down at the nest of fine chain, at the metal honeybee, no bigger than my thumbnail, glistening at the end. I know they mean for this to be my token, a piece of my district to wear in the arena. What I really want to do is tell them to keep it, to sell it for more important things for when I...well, if I don't return. But I don't say so. Instead I let my sister fasten it around my neck, where it rests on my chest, like a cold reminder of all I'm leaving behind.

They hug me, try to be lighthearted. Before they go, I take little Mimsey's hand.

"Mims," I say. And she's listening. She knows I'm being serious. "You have to take care of your Mom and Dad, okay?" She nods fervently. "And don't forget about the bees. Remember? You have to take care of Queen Etta and her Thousand Loyal Subjects, too."

"Queen Etta." Mimsey repeats. Then tears well up in her big hazel eyes and I can't look at her anymore.

And then they are made to leave and I sit by myself until May comes in with one of her sisters. I stand.

"Damn it May, don't cry," I say, my voice cracking. But I can tell she's not going to stop. Poor, delicate May. You'd think _she_ was going to the Games. I hug her while she sobs on my shoulder, trying desperately to keep back my own. I'm trying to delay the moment when it will all hit me.

"D-don't let them k-kill you," was all my friend could choke out before she runs from the room. Donia, May's sister, stays behind long enough to wish me luck and to give me a small bag of peppermints their family must have paid through the roof for.

Afterward, people from here and there in my past came in to say goodbye and wish me luck, until Capitol attendants announced our departure to the train that would take us to the Capitol.

~.~

I can't cry. I feel hollow inside. I walk though the station like water with the sapling of a boy a step behind me. The platform is teaming with camera crews and reporters. Every camera is pointed at us, and I try not to look at them. The lenses were like black holes, sucking up our images and they kind of freaked me out.

Merlin is ecstatic and enthusiastic with the cameras. He makes us wait before the train as cameras get a full view of us before pushing us aboard. Rowan stumbles a little in the entrance, and I hope for his sake that it was only me that notices.

We are joined by our appointed mentor for the games. A thin, clean man named Collin Dargan, who, as I recall, won the 48th Hunger Games by digging a hideout under a tree, lying low, and shooting at people with poison darts.

Colin gives us a weak smile when he boards the train behind us, but it comes out more like grimace.

I take a last look at the station, the people, the towering pines in the distance, the sky that's gone gray.

My district grows quiet when the door is shut upon it, and without hesitation we speed west. I have barely a moment to awe at the speed of the train before there's a scuffle, and I turn to see Collin supporting a very pale and limp Rowan. The kid's passed out cold.

"Couldn't handle all the excitement, poor fella," Merlin says to me consolingly, winking. His eyebrow wobbles, and I long to grab hold of it and yank. Hard.

~.~

It's only a couple hours to the Capitol.

When the inevitable realization hits me, I excuse myself from lunch and rush to my room. I sit on the bathroom floor next to the sparkly clean toilet bowl, trembling and nauseous. The cold from the tiles seep into my skin.

I'm a tribute, I kept thinking over and over. I'm going into an arena and I am going to die. Going to be killed. As much as I try to fight them off, images of myself being murdered in various ways invades my thoughts, taking over until I feel like screaming. But I remain quiet and still, feeling the train rumble beneath my icy-cold fingertips until a Capitol attendant finds me.

"We have nearly arrived," she says uniformly. "You may change if you like, then join your party in car three," This woman looks normal enough, which calms me. She gestures to a set of drawers before hurrying away.

I haul myself off the floor and check myself in the mirror to make sure I don't look like I just had a break down. Then, gratefully, I change out of my sister's dress. I lightly finger the bee pendant that's around my neck. _Be brave_, I think. I join the others.

Rowan had regained consciousness in time to pack down a table full of delicious Capitol food. He still looked extremely pale, but not as upset as he did before. Merlin is jabbering along like a bunch of squirrels to no one in particular. The light from outside goes dark for a few minutes as we go into a tunnel, but then bright light blinds us. The Capitol is stretched out before us, like a massive forest of trees in autumn, colorful, sparkling. People swarm like intricate bees when they see the tribute train, but fall back when we pull into a station and disappear from their view.

"You're belongings will be brought to your rooms for you," Merlin says, bouncing back and forth as we enter an enormous window-plated building. I know this to be the tribute holding area. Everything is in here. The remake centers, the training center, the auditorium where we have our televised interviews. "The opening ceremonies are in about five or so hours," Merlin continues. "That will give your stylists plenty of time to get you ready! Oh, boy, I'm just busting with excitement, aren't you?"

_Sure we are, Merlin. _

I've barely been in the Capitol five minutes and I already feel uncomfortable. There are too many buildings, too much concrete. Not enough trees and free air.

Merlin pushes us forward, informing us that we were needed for remake "immediately, so no dilly-dallying you two!" And before we know it, Rowan and I find ourselves in a bright, buzzing, highly perfumed office area where funny looking Capitol people with big eyes, singsong pitchy voices, and were, as Merlin would say, _dying_ to remake us.


	3. Chapter 3

~3~

Shortly after Merlin signs us in, I'm approached by a strange looking pair of prep-stylists. A man and a woman, who are identical from their green jump-suited bodies to the spiked blue hair that looked like they used chain saws instead of scissors. Twins, they must have been. They introduce themselves as Lizza and Zazz, and lead me into a vacant room where they proceed evaluate me.

The twins speak in electric voices and along with the Capitol accent makes them sound more like insects than people. This made it seem a little less weird. By a bit.

"I like the hair," Zazz is saying. "The eyebrows are very thick, which personally I think goes well, what do you think? Do you think she'll let us keep them?"

"Just a little plucking at the edge would work wonders," Lizza replies, she pokes at my arms, she picks up one of my hands. "So calloused!" She clucks. "Oh, darling, your poor fingernails! They always work you so hard in that district. I never get any decent nails to work with!"

You definitely know you're in that Capitol when people are complaining about insufficient fingernails. In the districts we have more pressing matters, like not starving to death. I suppress a sigh.

"Sorry about that," I say flatly. Luckily I have a lot of patience, otherwise these two would drive be up the wall in a matter of seconds.

~.~

About two hours later I'm cleaner than I've ever been in my life. My prep team even used a special cream that ate into the years of ground in dirt in my rough hands, leaving them tingly and soft. They go on about how excited they are for the Games and I grit my teeth and sit through it without a single objection passing my lips. If there's one thing I've learned from the years of tributes I've seen, it's that if you're not super tough, be as nice as you possibly can to everyone. You won't get sponsored if you're unpleasant and don't have the brawn to make up for it.

A glass door opens wide and the woman who must be my stylist prances in. She's rather short and thinly built, in skin tight pants with a silky shirt that has a scoop-neck reaching her navel. Her complexion is dark compared to my pale prep team, and her dark hair is curled tight to her scalp. Golden tattoos like tree rings spiral up her arms and her neck.

"Fern!" She piped, beaming. She takes my hands in her thin pixie ones and shakes them. "I am Antigone, your stylist! Are your ready for some epicness?"

I'm shaken by her intensity, but polity respond with a yes. As we launch into another episode of Fern-preening, I wonder, vaguely, if Rowans stylists are quite as insane as mine are.

~.~

"So am I going to be a tree this year, or a lumberjack?" I ask innocently when Antigone comes back with my costume in a case. We're always one or the other, without fail.

Antigone looks confused. She doesn't have eyebrows. "Neither," she says, then she grins broadly. "Just you wait!" she squeals. "You're going to love it."

Naked lumberjacks? I think. Wouldn't put it passed them...

When Antigone pulls the costume out with a sing-song "Ta-daaa!", I recoil on my chair. It looks like she is holding a sheet of saw teeth, glistening and sharp.

"I'm wearing that?" I say before I can stop myself. Antigone just wiggles a little in excitement.

"Isn't it great?" She sets it down and pulls out the make-up sets that go with it. "District Seven tributes have never been saws before, I checked. And I am so done with all the trees and stuff. I'm going to go down in history now!"

As the stylist who murdered her tributes with lethal costumes, I think but don't say. Antigone order's me up, and proceeds to spray me down with silver. Surprisingly soon after, she's fitting me with a crown of saw teeth that sit heavily on my head. Then she's taking the clinking pointy garment and strapping it around me. It's not as bad as I was imagining it, at first. Behind the spiked teeth was a thick layer of leather that protected me. But the costume was heavy. I couldn't put my arms all the way down for fear of being sliced. When Antigone pronounced herself finished, she pushed me in front of a large floor-to-ceiling mirror.

If I didn't look like a completely different person, I would have been embarrassed to go out in front of the Capitol in this. Apart from being hazardous, the costume was also quite reveling. An apron-like front barely covered my breasts, with a strip of teeth connecting it to the bottom half which was a skirt that only went a few inches down my thigh. My head was surrounded by a halo of spikes, my face was metallic-looking, like a robot.

"What do you think, Fern? Isn't it magnificent?"

Besides from making me look like a robot prostitute, I think. I tell her that it was very imaginative.

"Ahh, it's time for you to go!" Antigone jumps up, all excitement and bubbles. I feel a sudden sickness to my stomach, and in the mirror I can see my nervousness in the wide brown eyes that stare back at me, standing out against all the silver. I swallow it down.

We meet Rowan and his stylist in the giant stable area underneath the Remake center. This is where all the tributes from the districts load up in horse-pulled chariots in preparation of being paraded around the City Center.

"Nice teeth," I say slyly to the boy, gesturing to his toga-like ensemble practically identical to mine, hoping that chatting will relieve some of my nerves. I see Rowan's eyes stray to my chest, but then he looks away almost instantly, blushing under the silver make-up.

Out of the corners of my eyes, I see the other tributes lining up in their chariots. Some of their costumes are equally as bizarre as ours, so it makes me feel slightly more comfortable as we mount the seventh chariot, made of wood with silver trim, with four chestnut horses at the front.

"Look happy out there!"

"Look tough!"

Our stylists wave us off as one by one, the chariots pull out into the city to roaring applause.

~.~

Fatigue sets in on me as we ride the magnificent elevator to the seventh floor; our floor. Dinner is laid out for us, steaming on a large dark-wood table with servants standing around. I long for the soft bed that awaits me in my overly decadent room, but I am never one to pass up food, especially when I am hungry.

And so I change out of my teeth, wash the silver from my skin, change into some considerably softer and harmless clothes, then go out into the dinning room. Everyone is there; Merlin, Collin, even our stylists. I eat buttery steamed vegetables in gravy and listen to Merlin go on about everything, the stylists chatting along.

"I think the crowed loved them, but I am so going to file a complaint for that scum of a plagiarist Livonia for dressing her tributes in fish scales!" Antigone complained to the table at large.

Rowans stylist, a thin man named Ignatius, with bright orange eyes that matched his sleek hair, nodded fervently. "You know, I really agree, the costumes did look very similar, theirs were shiner and more colorful, unfortunately. You know I wouldn't put it passed Livonia to copy your designs, Antigone. We all know how competitive she can be..."

"...and when the moment comes, they'll all be shouting '_District Seven, District Seven, we all love you, Merlin Meyers!'_"

"I think it would have been better if we could have had silver horses instead of brown, I think that would have make it all more saw-like..."

"_...Merlin Meyers is our hero..._"

"Now I know the two we got here this year aren't the biggest or the toughest, but I'm sure we can pull some decent numbers in training, we always do..."

"_Merlin has come, let him be our savior-_"

"What are you going on about?" Collin puts down his silverware with a chink on his plate and the table grows quiet for a moment. He looks at Merlin who is poised with a wine glass in his hand with a dreamy look in his eyes.

"Honestly, you're a nut-case." Collin says dismissively, leaving Merlin with a ridiculously dumfounded look on his face that I couldn't help but giggle at.

Of course, me giggling had everyone staring at me in surprise. Put on the spot, I look to Collin, who gives me a small smile. He has bags under his eyes like purple bruises. His eyes seem kind, but there is a shadow over them.

Rowan sits next to me and doesn't say a word. I cant remember if he has actually said anything at all.

~.~

Even though I felt like passing out the minute I got into bed, it was like my my mind was suddenly buzzing along at record pace, the volume turned way up, making sleep impossible. I try to sleep, I really do. I had training tomorrow. Everything I do will somehow or another decide whether I am going to die in a few days or not, so I really needed the rest.

I might have dosed off, but the electric green numbers on the clock beside me seemed to be ticking through honey, in other words, really, really slow. Eventually, I got tics in my legs and had to get up.

That was when I heard voices in the lounge area outside my room.

It was a little after two in the morning.

In plush woolen socks, I slip soundlessly to the door and open it. I see yellow light. The voices stop, and the faces of Collin and Rowan look up at me from the sofa.

"Ahh," I whispered. "Am I interrupting-"

Collin smiles his customary weak little smile. He waves his hand, gesturing me over.

"Not at all. Welcome to the Insomnia Club. Please, take a seat."

I sit in one of the armchairs. "Insomnia Club?" I ask. I look at Rowan, who was evidentially as sleepless as I had been, hunched cross-legged on the seat cushion next to Collin.

"It's a little tradition I started last time I was here." Collin hands me a mug. "Tea?" He asks.

"Thanks." It's warm and tastes like home. Like the wild mint I would sometimes find in the woods. This beyond all other things comforts me.

Collin looks at me. He sits tucked into the corner of the couch with is hands clasped in his lap. He's very thin, like he never eats right, and his cheeks are hollow. Even though he is in his mid-thirties, he has some aspects to his appearance that make him look child-like, the large eyes, his fragile posture. I try to imagine what he must have looked like when he won his round of the Games, but it's difficult. Surly he did not look this haunted when he was young.

"You alright, Fern?" He asks. "What kept you awake? The quietness?"

It's partly the truth, so I nod. "It's never this quiet at home...you know...with all the mills," I say.

"Rowan and I were just talking about home," Collin says. Rowan grips his mug in his lap and says nothing.

His silence was starting to wear me out.

"I started a little Insomnia Club their too, with my...neighbors."

"Do you ever sleep?" I ask.

"I don't usually. Can't anyway. Especially not here in the Capitol." He sighs. "Well, since I have you two here, and since I'm supposed to keep you alive as long as I can, I suppose we should discuss the next three days."

"Training."

"Exactly." Collin leans forward. Rowan and I lean in, too, like we're afraid the the Insomnia Club is being taped. "You're goal," he starts, with an official and sincere tone I had not heard from him before, "going in that training center with all the show-offish Careers and everyone is to _not_ use your strengths, alright? I encourage you to try every station they have, experiment, become familiar with the weapons and survival skills, but stay away from what you're good at, use your time wisely, understand?"

Slowly, we nod.

"Good. Well, that's pretty much it for the time being. Now, I insist you try some of these Capitol sweets-they're to _die_ for. Ouch, I sounded like Merlin."

We talk for a while, the conversation light and easy and comforting. And slowly, I feel my day weigh heavily on my shoulders again, and feel like I would really fall asleep if I laid down this time.

With Collin nibbling at carmel sweats and fruit drops, and Rowan snoring softly next to him, I excuse myself.

"A word of advice, Fern," Collin says as I head for my door. I look back at him.

"Don't give away your secrets." he says slowly, meaningfully. "More often then not they'll use them against you."


	4. Chapter 4

~4~

Finally, it's crack down time. No more Mr. Silent.

It's ten'o'clock, and I'm dressed in soft legging-like pants and a roomy shirt the color of rich chocolate. Rowan and I take the elevator down to the training center. The second the elevator doors close on us, I speak.

"Rowan, I don't know anything about you." I say.

He looks at me, there's a few second's pause, then he mumbles, "The less you know, the less trouble it will cause you to forget about me."

"What?" I exclaim, taken aback. "What are you talking about?"

He speaks up, like he has been wanting to say these words for a while. "I'm not going to win." His voice is soft, and he sounds so much like a child.

"You never know," I snap. Okay, so I feel badly for him, I'm in the same exact situation, but he's the one that crushes what little hope I can sustain with every solemn, defeated look. What are the chances, out of all the boys in District 7, I get Mr. Pessimist as a battle buddy. I tell him so so I don't have to think about the fact that no matter how refuse to accept it, he's probably right. There was nothing in the arena for him but death. Unless he had some kick-ass skills hidden in those baggy sleeves.

My heart starts to pound when we reach the gymnasium. All I see are muscular, hulking, terrifying looking teenagers. We get our district number pinned to our backs, and then we're all made to gather up in a huddle while the head trainer, Atala, reads off the rules.

Apart from this tiny wisp of a boy from District 12 and a few younger-looking girls, I'm the shortest one in the group. Most of the tributes this year look older anyway. Most seem to range closer to my age.

There are many different stations in the gym. When we're let loose, I avoid all the weapon stations, that's where all the Careers went. Instead I go to the first empty station I find: camouflage.

"Ever tried painting before?" Asks the instructor enthusiastically.

"Maybe once or twice," I say.

"Well, if you're good at it, camouflage will be a cinch for you!"

For about an hour, I construct blinds with leafy branches, squiggle mud-like paints onto my arms. I breeze by the wild edibles table, showing interest only in the plants that were unfamiliar, spent some time tying knots, and eventually, grudgingly, made it to the weapons.

They repulsed me. The thought of killing repulsed me, since way back when I was younger, when there was this boy who went crazy after a very high fever. He would spend his day collecting stones, muttering all the time. He'd carry them and make a pile in the street. Then he would track down a tired old stray and stone it to death. It only happened a few times before it stopped forever. Before they took him away. But there was still a little pile of stones left in the street for a long time afterward. A reminder.

I was probably only about nine or ten then, but to this day it disturbed me. I couldn't even imagine killing anything that way, with that brutality. Somehow, I'd have to avoid it in the area. I wouldn't be able to trust myself if, for when moment came, I would be able to throw the knife, or land the final blow.

But I decided not to think about that right now.

A group of seven or eight middle-aged men and women in velvety purple robes came to watch us that afternoon. They were the Gamemakers, the masterminds of design in the games. Half of the time they would stare at us and take notes, the other half gorging themselves at a buffet table set up for them.

I jump around with the weapons, learning the basics in all of them, feeling self-conscious when I tried them out. Career tributes would watch me, whisper comments, snicker.

And so goes the next few days. I get up, eat and train. Eat lunch and train. Eat dinner and try to sleep. Have tea with Collin and Rowan and talk. Sleep. Get up. During training, I don't see much of Rowan, he jumps around the stations as much as I do. I ask him after the second day what he was going to show the Gamemakers when the private sessions started the next day. He shrugs, avoids my gaze, mutters something.

"What's that?" I ask.

He speaks up, still not looking at me. "Climb around stuff I guess."

"Oh, so you're a tree climber? Great, me too. We can hang out together in trees all during the games and drop things on people, how does that sound?"

Thank god, it coaxed a smile out of the poor boy. He looks me full on for the first time. The past couple days of rich Capitol food has given a healthy tinge to his cheeks. His eyes are as black as coal. They're kind of creepy, but the small smile on his lips makes up for it.

"Sounds nice," he says.

~.~

It's almost lunch on the third and final day of training, I'm at the knot tying station constructing a net from long grasses. It was quite tedious but I was determined. Who knew what was in store for us in the arena. For all I knew, we could get put into a desolate island where we need to fish for our food. Getting net tying under my belt would be nothing but useful. The monotonous work also kept my mind from dwelling on the private training sessions we were to have after lunch; our evaluation by the Gamemakers when our tribute rating will be decided.

"It would be easier if you work from the center out," A voice says from behind me. My head whips around. The boy from district 4 stands behind me, head tilted, examining my work. He's tall and muscular, with hair like dark oak wood. He has that tanned look of working in the sun all day. If I recall correctly, his name is Jonah.

"Thanks for the advice," I say automatically, trying to sound uninterested. He was holding a long, curved dagger loosely in his right hand. It was kind of intimidating if you ask me.

"You don't have much use for nets in District 7," he says matter-of-factly.

I keep my eyes on my work. "Sure we do," I say slowly. "You know, for the bears."

His laugh is charming, but underneath there's a hint of malevolence, like he wouldn't hesitate to use that knife he holds. Jonah comes up next to me. He drags a finger across the top of the net, feeling the knots, I supposed. Making me feel uncomfortable.

"Try going for a square shape with your knots," he says. His eyes are blue-gray, like storm clouds. "They pull more evenly than circles."

I see his eyes go to my bee pendent hung around my neck, then he straightens and starts to walk away. "Good luck with the Gamemakers," he says.

I spend the next few minutes just staring at my netting, wondering what all that was about, and what the hell he meant by making squares.

It must be unusual. Generally, only the Career tributes get real friendly with each other. They form a sort of elite group while everyone else just survives on their own. District 7 was far from a career district, so why would Jonah be interested in me? It's not like I'm any sort of competition. In the arena, I will basically be able to feed myself, and that's it.

When lunch arrives, I'm too nervous to eat. Rowan also looks nervous. He's gotten very pale and I hope he doesn't pass out again. I swallow down bites of food with great effort.

I watch Jonah. He's at a table with the other Careers. They're laughing, gesturing, the big District 1 boy next to him seems to be reenacting something. Possibly one of the weaker tributes being helplessly amateur with some weapon or another. And then the boy's gone, called into the gym by the Gamemakers. Slowly, they all start to disappear.

I wish Rowan luck when he is called. I wait helplessly, accidentally catch the eye of the District 10 girl which results in awkwardness. Seconds tick buy sluggishly.

Then it's me. I walk into the gym.

Luckily, the Gamemakers are still awake.

I think,_ don't give away your secrets_, then I prepare to climb walls.

~.~

"You're score's next, Rowan!" Merlin is announcing joyously. It's the evening. The large screen in our living room projects the Gamemakers results for each tribute, broadcasted across the continent. The Careers got high scores as usual. The District 6 girl's face is just disappearing and Rowan tenses on the couch.

"Ohh," Merlin says, "A five. Not what we'd hope for, but better than a four!"

"Fern's got a five, as well," Collin says. He looks at me thoughtfully, calculating, as if trying to conjure up my thoughts. Merlin rants on but the rest of us remain quiet.

A five isn't very good, but it's a golden number. It's a number that makes you invisible in the arena. If you're not killed immediately, stronger tributes have a tendency to leave you alone until all the threats are dealt with. That is, if you can hide well.

~.~

Collin is handing me a cup of tea. "Five isn't that bad if you think about it," he's saying. "I got a four, if you believe it, and I didn't win because of brawn, let me tell you..." He pauses, thoughtfully. "Well, I suppose the four is partly because I didn't try to hard with the Gamemakers-don't get me wrong, getting a high score to attract sponsors is great, but I think what I realized, back then," he pauses to sip his tea, "is that when it comes down to it, it's just you. You and your opponents in the arena. Sponsors aren't good for much when you're about to get speared...or..." He stops, looks at me apologetically.

I hold my tea, the heat seeping into my fingers. It's sometime in the early hours of the morning. Rowan must have really fallen asleep because he didn't show up for the Insomnia Club.

"Anxious about the interviews?" he asks.

I can't lie, so I nod. "I don't know if I'll be able to...say the right things," I mumble.

"Fern," Collin says earnestly, "Out of all the District Seven tributes I've seen come an go, you're the most genuine; honest and kind. You'll know what to say when the time comes, and people will like you."

I'm flattered. I sip my tea. His words are comforting, but do not alleviate my anxiety. Instead, a question burns in my throat, one that's been there fore a while.

"Collin?" I ask hesitantly. "Do you think...the Capitol knows about me? About my-"

"-Bees?" He cuts in. "That you're illegally beekeeping? Probably not, it's not that important."

He's trying to make me feel better. But I know that he knows what I really mean. I thank him with a smile before he gets to the real answer.

"No," he says finally. "I don't think they know. Do you want them to?"

"I don't know," I say honestly. "I don't know if it will help me or crush me."

"Well, I guess we'll have to hope for a lot of tracker-jacker nests in the arena and see."

I go to bed but lay awake, trying to empty my mind. The interviews were in less than 24 hours. The moment when the whole capital will make their final judgment of me before they send me out to my death the following day.

I probably won't sleep at all.

**A/N:**

Thanks for bearing with me, guys! Next chapter-I promise-the Games begin! YAY!


	5. Chapter 5

**A/N: **Yay! It's finally here! Don't forget to review!

~5~

I'm in a tight-fitting, silver dress with an imprinted leaves and branches design in shades of green swirling across it. My hair is down, my shoes fit nicely.

Without a doubt this is a massive improvement on Antigone's part.

I wish it would help my nerves.

Caesar Flickerman, traditionally the man who interviews the tributes, sits in plush, beige chairs and speaks jovially to the audience, warming them up. He's a leaf-green this year. Hair matching his plump lips and his sparkling suit.

Below is the City Center, thousands of faces turned toward the twenty-four of us and Caesar. They buzz with excitement.

Fuchsia. That's the name of the District 1 girl who is up first for the interviews. She's tall, muscular with long silky copper hair. When she smiles, the crowd goes wild. When she speaks, it's with the purr of lioness, her kill between her paws. The boy is equally entrancing, but built like a grizzly.

Unlike the Gamemakers, Caesar does not tire. He feeds off the crowd as each of the 3 minute interviews tick by. The District 2s are just as big as the first. District 3's tributes are thin, scrawny looking kids build like willows. When his turn comes around, Jonah walks to the stage like he owns the place. He waves at the crowd and they scream. He's very handsome in his fitted suit. His hair sparkles, like his stylist put jewels in it. Caesar comments on this, and then enthusiastically congratulates his costume for the opening ceremonies.

"I could have sworn you two just crawled out of the ocean!" He babbled. "All those simmering scales, just like slippery fish!"

"The slipperiest fish are the hardest to catch," Jonah says with a sly smile at the crowd. Ladies scream. Man, he's got sponsors in the bag. I wish it was that easy for the rest of us.

District 5 were more hungry-looking, emaciated kids. However, District 6 pulled a very impressing girl, 14-year-old Eva, who was sweet and polite, and had scored an impressive nine in training. What stuck with me most, however, was how much she resembled May. Same curly auburn hair, same round face with gentle eyes. It filled me with a sick sadness that I kept down with my nerves. When the District 6 boy was up, I couldn't even register what as being said, I was that nervous. I my legs were shaking and my palms sweat. When the buzzer went off, I stood roboticly. Moved towards the smiling face and welcoming arms of Caesar Fickerman. I shake his hand, and empty my mind. I can do this.

I smile as warmly as I can.

"Well, Fern, I think that it's safe to say that your opening ceremony costume was a first! Who's wondrous idea was to make you a pair of saws, eh?"

Caesar is friendly, calming.

"That would be Antigone. She's full of...crazy amazing ideas," I say. I see the cameras go to and hold on the face of my blushing stylist. "It's nice to get a break from all the tree costumes," I add.

"It certainly was refreshing! Luckily you're still in one piece, eh?"

I grin. "I wasn't so sure, there, for a moment, I thought Antigone really had it in for me."

I get a laugh from the crowd.

"I don't take you as a person with a lot of enemies," he says in response.

"Weeeeell," I hesitate and make a show of biting my lip. The crowd laughs again. Playing them up was a lot easier than it looked.

Caesar's really into it. "I guess so far, a lot of people have been misjudging you. You're not just that sweet little lumberjack girl that you let us all believe, are you?

"What?" I ask in mock offense. "I'm not a sweet lumberjack girl?"

Man, it was easy to make these people laugh.

"Well, tell us Fern, what's it like for you, suddenly turning into a nation wide celebrity? You're family and friends must be so proud."

He _had_ to go there... I'm sobered, but I keep the resentment out of my voice, instead I force the sweet. "I mean, gosh, Caesar, who wouldn't be? A chance to go to this amazing city? It's a once in a life time kind of thing."

"So they're probably all jealous of you right now? I know I'd be!"

"Well, they're probably not jealous. They just want me to do all the dirty work, as usual," I grin.

"There's definitely going to be a lot of that in the arena, am I right?" Caesar asks the audience. They cheer. The savages.

"Got any strategies you'd like to share with the crowd? He asks, sweeping his arm theatrically at them.

I narrow my eyes. "Now, that's my secret, Caesar. If I tell it, it won't be a secret anymore."

Caesar turned to the crowd and wiggled his eyebrows. "Hows that for an answer?" They all shout accordingly.

"Just one last question, Fern." Caesar leans in, and I lean in too. The crowd giggles as we pretend to share a secret.

"So tell us," he says in a sort of stage-whisper, "what was up with that five in training? Smart girl like you, seems like the Gamemakers would have given you a higher score."

I pause and really think about the answer. My eyes stray to Collin in the crowd. He's watching me intently with the same calculating look as before, waiting for me to say the right thing.

"I think," I say slowly. "The Gamemakers just weren't looking in the right place."

The crowd murmurs with excitement, then applaud enthusiastically when the buzzer goes off. As I leave the stage shakily, I pass Rowan, stumbling forward, white as a sheet. I give his arm a quick inconspicuous squeeze for comfort.

I sit down, exhausted, heart pounding.

All that was left now was the arena.

That was all that was left-of everything.

~.~

In the recaps of the interviews, I look more natural than I thought I would. It's a relief. I almost feel a little pride at my performance. Merlin pats our backs and congratulates us.

They say it's going to be an exciting year for the Games, with lots of promising tributes and tough competition. Viewers are already placing their bids. Even with all the speculation going on, all of us tributes are still going into the arena blindly. None of us know what is in store. For all we know, we're going to be dropped off in a dessert, or in the freezing arctic. In reality there is now way to prepare what is going to come.

So we all eat the last dinner. Rowan and I do our best to think and talk about anything and everything that is not related to the games. We try, but it is hard with Merlin and the stylists around. Collin is some relief, bringing up random subjects like food and his pet raccoons anytime Merlin tries to coach us on how to avoid being killed. Antigone and Ignatius talking about people we have not and will never know is also helpfully distracting.

I go to bed early and lay with my eyes closed for hours listening to my breathing. I don't get up. I don't want to go the the Insomnia Club.

I just want to hold onto the solidarity of being alone and safe for that last time.

~.~

Today might as well be my last.

I'm in a plane, and I'm numb. Not from cold, that's for sure.

I ate as much as I could at breakfast even though it was like eating sawdust. I really, really needed food in my stomach.

We don't know where we're going, only that it is an hour or so away. We sit in cold silence.

When we land and are made to go to separate rooms, Rowan stops and turns to me. After this, we will not see each other again until we are in the arena. He looks at me with his creepy black eyes and puts on a brave face.

"I won't kill you if you won't kill me." he says quietly, in a breathless rush.

My heart breaks. This poor, brave soul. I smile a little, it's probably my last for a while.

"Deal," I say. We shake on it, then are ferried into our launch rooms by our stylists.

Antigone is jittery with excitement as she unwraps my outfit. They're identical for all the tributes. As she fits it on me, I take in the small details, anything to give me a hint. Insulated pale greenish-gray shirt. Thick gray pants made of the same stuff. Slim, flexible, waterproof boots which go up to my knees. A light jacket with lots of pockets and loops and a hood with a visor.

I think, _it's going to be wet._

A Capitol woman comes in and briskly injects my arm with a tracking devise. It's stinging like hell when I hear Collin outside the door.

"You already screened me-I don't have anything on me!" After a few seconds, he comes in with an unhappy looking guard behind him.

"How does the outfit feel?" He asks.

"Comfortable," I say, but my eyes plead. _I'm so terrified, _I hope they said. _Help me._

"I've only got a minute," he says quickly. "I know that in a few minutes you're going to have a lot of things on your mind, but just remember. Water. Warmth. You've got food covered. If you must, take only what's nearest you at the Cornucopia and get out of there as fast a you can, got it? Once you're alone you can figure out what to do. Remember. Water. Warmth."

"Water," I say. "Warmth."

He squeezes my shoulder and I fight back terrified tears. "We're all behind you." He says.

"And Rowan," I say.

"And Rowan."

Before he leaves, he says over his shoulder, "Remember what I said, Fern-about the bees."

"Beekeeping is illegal."

Collin nods as he's hustled out the door. "That's right."

I touch my token, the honeybee pendent around my neck.

A cool voice on an intercom announces the departure.

"Time to go!" Antigone squeals. In a manner that seemed way to excited for this obviously grave situation, she makes me stand in the capsule that would take me up to the arena. When I do, a dome comes over me and all drops into silence. I listen to my heartbeat, beating maniacally in my chest. I see the tiny, dark form of Antigone bouncing up and down and waving then all is dark.

~.~

The Cornucopia. That's the first thing I see. Then the field. Then the clusters of shrubby trees surrounding it and a dense-looking forest beyond.

Then it's the white sky. And the sweet smell of rain.

We have 60 seconds.

I look around at the others, all standing on their metal plates, then I see the things strewn around me. I spot a coil of black cord right next to me. A small, reflective silver pack a little farther off. If I ran in that direction, I could grab both and be heading straight for the cover of the trees in a few seconds.

Then we hear a voice, boom across the sky like thunder. It's the voice of Claudius Templesmith. "Ladies and Gentlemen, let the Sixty-first annual Hunger Games-begin!"

My heart pounds in my throat. I don't have time to look at anyone or anything. The gong goes off.

Shapes are suddenly moving. Everything blurs. I take off-grab the cord and collide instantly with a small figure. The tiny District 12 boy stumbles back and shields his face. I don't have time. I don't have any time. I spin on the ground, hear a thud somewhere, a scream. Another one. I close my fingers around the silver pack and lurch towards the trees. My fear makes me run faster. There's shouting. Was that the thudding of footsteps behind me? I make it to the trees and I hear a thunk as a knife lodges itself into the ground behind my feet. Damp leaves slap at my face as I crash like a maniac through the dense greenery. I run until my throat burns. I run until all I can hear is my gasping. I run until I collapse against a tree trunk, heaving. My eyes search the trees around me. My sweat is cold on my forehead. I can't run anymore, but I keep walking. Away. Far away.

The ground is covered in pine needles and dead leaves and is slick with moisture. The plants around me are unfamiliar. Tall, scraggly looking pines, weird oaks with tiny leaves, large, tropical looking plants with wide, many-fingered leaves and endless brush and moss.

Thankfully it's not very cold, but it's not very warm, either.

I walk for what feels like hours and meet no one. I start to wonder if I'm still traveling away from the cornucopia or if I'm going in circles or something. I wonder how many people died in the bloodbath I left behind. I wondered if Rowan was still alive.

Siting on a log I took a break to look through my pack. What I found heavily lightened my spirits.

A thick plastic water skin with an usually wide mouth. A medium-sized tarp, a tube of some kind of cream. A pair of gloves. A packet of crackers and cheese. The tarp would be good for warmth in the night, as well as the gloves which were light and leathery.

It's started to rain. Tiny spitting drops like mist. I'm grateful for the hood, and the boots keeping my feet dry.

The sudden sound of cannon fire that shoots through the sky scares me so much I jump up. My heart is racing again but I try to calm down. I count. Each firing makes the trees shake, each representing an innocent kid who's life had just been stolen in the bloodbath. I count. Eight. _Only Eight?_ That still left 16 people including me. I guess the speculations weren't wrong when they said the Games would be tough this year.

I wouldn't find out who the eight tributes were until that evening, so I tried just pushing it all out of my mind for a while.

I know they're all watching me. Every minute. Every second. So what ever I do I have to keep my cool. I think. Water. That's what I need, what Collin told me to find. Thankfully, water seems to be something quite common around here.

I keep walking. I feel the thirst building in my throat, but find no ponds, no streams.

I'm so exhausted from all the stress of the past day and the running, that thinking straight has become a task.

I break through some trees and suddenly my foot splashes into something cold. My stomach sinks as I look out before me.

_Well_, I think sourly, _found the water._


	6. Chapter 6

~6~

I step back quickly onto the mushy bank. I've seen pictures of swamps in books before, but there was something ominous about being in one, especially when the mist rising off the water was so dense the trees disappeared. Scraggly moss hung down from the canopy like tattered clothes. Trees and bushes grew out of the water, which was dark and oily looking.

I stare at the swamp stretching on into whiteness before me. Dead trees make slippery bridges here and there across the shallow water. The air is sweet with the smell of decay. Up ahead, I see fat little birds and hear them chirp. It was ominous but peaceful.

I don't want to drink the water-everything about it says poison. Maybe if I had some type of filter or purification additive it would be okay, but I don't have those things. Just the funny looking water skin and my steadily growing thirst.

Then it comes- another blast of a cannon that sent the birds squawking away. Another dead. I guess it was something that I would have to get used to.

With darkness setting in I find a tall pine and haul myself up. It's damp and not ideal, but hopefully safe.

As I settle in, I wrapped the tarp around me. I sincerely hoped would keep me dry and insulate my heat. Rain was still falling steadily, and drops collected on the surface of the tarp. It made little puddles.

Then it hit me, it was so obvious! The rainwater! When in doubt it's the safest option! Without thinking to much about what kinds of consequences may result and only thinking of how thirsty I was, I delicately slurp up the puddles.

Then the sky explodes with sound as the anthem announces the death recap. I look up though a gap in the sparse pine branches and see the screen projected onto the sky and the faces that are flashing across it.

The District 4 girl's face appears first. A surprise, because she was a Career and also because it meant those two weedy District 3 kids somehow made it. Both from 5. I hold my breath. The boy from 6. And then it's the face of the District 8 girl and then the boy and I sigh with relief. Somehow, little Rowan Bickford was alive. Both from 10. Last is the face of the wisp of a boy from 12, the one I had accidentally knocked over right from start. I stare at the boy's face until the sky grows dark again, and try to avoid feeling like I played a part in his death.

That night in the tree, in what little sleep I had my dreams were filled with dark, evil-eyed faces and the cowering shape of the boy with his hands over his face.

~.~

The cannon blast wakes me with a start. My heartbeat shakes me. So maybe getting used to the sudden _BOOM_s was going to be harder than it seemed.

Dawn peeks through the dense trees and my breath comes out in a mist. My hands and feet are numb, but I didn't care-I'd made it through the first day, and that was enough to lighten my spirits. The misty rain seemed to have dissipated for the time being, but a good-sized puddle has formed on my tarp. I take out my water skin and study it. Now that I looked at it, the wide mouth seemed to be more like a funnel.

It was perfect.

Somehow, knowing that the Gamemakers had purposely left an item perfect for collecting rainwater made actually drinking it seem safer, like it was what we were supposed to do.

As I gently drain the puddle into the water skin, I pick at my food rations to ease the monster in my gut. First thing on my agenda-collect food.

Crackling in the branches above alerts me to a couple fat squirrels as they scamper away. It would have been great if I knew how to hunt. It would be even greater if I had anything to arm myself with. I would just have to be extra careful and not run into anyone.

I pack up my things and climb down. When I hit the ground, I instantly feel uneasy and vulnerable. _Just get the food, _I tell myself. _Get the food, then find another tree. _And then what? Hide up there until I have to get more food? How long could that cycle last until I was faced with some of the drama that has come to be expected in the arena? How long until I was tracked down by career tributes, or attacked by some ravenous animal? My constant looking over my shoulder, the jumpiness of my nerves told me that it wouldn't be very long at all.

~.~

Despite the acceptable amount of wild edibles I scrounged up, none of it seemed to ease the emptiness in my stomach. They didn't call it the "Hunger Games" for nothing, that was for sure. It was sometime in the afternoon, and I was settled high in a tree once more, with my handy tarp and my growing uneasiness. It's a bad sign when nothing happens for a while.

There had been two more cannon blasts that day. The careers were most likely working their way through the pool of tributes. I had not seen hide nor hair of anyone since the cornucopia and I was convinced any minute now, murderous teenagers were going to crash through the undergrowth and discover me. I nervously busied myself checking and double checking the identities of the plants I'd collected, nibbling here and there.

It was near nightfall when I heard her, from always off. Heard her crashing through the forest taking sharp, terrified breaths. Then I hear her pursuers and shouting. The sound carries through the trees as all birds fall silent. From my tree, all I can see is the occasional top of the girl's dirty-blond head as she runs for her life. I close my eyes and stay stone still. I wait for them all to pass and pray no one notices me- a slightly obvious mass of body in a tree in the distance.

I barely breathe until I hear the cannon, and even then, with the careers somewhere close by, I'm frozen. I sit, ridged and tense as darkness falls around me and the anthem plays.

Four today. I try to remember their names as their faces flash by and I mentally kick myself for forgetting them so easily. The boy from District 2 is gone-most likely didn't get along with the others-and the weedy boy from 3. The last two are both District 9 tributes and I recognized the fair-haired girl as being the one who was being chased just an hour or so ago. What was her name? I hated how meaningless lives became in the Games. At first we're all still children with families and futures, then we become animals for slaughter the moment the Capitol learns our names.

That night it's cold and the rain's started up again. I huddle under my tarp. I don't sleep. They don't find me.

~.~

There's no sign of the Careers in the morning, but I'm cautious anyway. And cold, and worse-weak as ever. A diet of small plants and leaves was not enough to keep anyone going, unless you were to eat several pounds of it a day. What I really needed was to find some roots or mushrooms.

When I climbed down from the tree, all I could think about was ambush, but I forced myself to stay calm, to search for foods with a clear head. My water skin was comfortingly heavy in my pocket and this comforted me.

It took what seemed like hours, but to my delight I found a rather large patch of wild radishes. They didn't grow at home, but I remembered their distinctive purple flowers from the training center. With rain falling heavily now, I pull up the roots and clean them off on the damp needles that litter the ground.

With a strange feeling of hope in my chest, I walk slowly and quietly through the woods, scouting out my next tree. Through some large fern-like plants I can see the mist-covered swamp as I pass. Hopefully I will never have to go in there. I bet there were alligators.

Suddenly I break through the brush and find myself in a small, open field quite like the one at the cornucopia. I'm halfway out of the shelter of the clearing's edge when I freeze. Across the clearing, fifty or so yards away, four very large career tributes sit under a tree and four dirty, battle crazed faces instantly turn in my direction.

I don't even breathe. It's the cornucopia scene all over again. I spin away into the trees, as fast as my legs can take me. There was no doubt they were on my tail. How could I have been so stupid as to walk right into them? Rain slashes my face. Trees flash by. I've only got a millisecond to pick one before I leap like some professional dancer-though less gracefully, I'm sure- into it's lower branches and scrabble up like a spooked squirrel. The tree's slimy with lichen, but I keep going. I hear the thud of the careers as they skid to a halt at the base, but I'm already fifty feet up and climbing higher. My heart pounds in my throat. I've never been so scared in my life.

Finally, I come to a rest where the branches are too thin to keep going, and I chance a peek below. They were trying to follow me up, but only got so far. I see Fuchsia. She tries to throw a nasty looking serrated spear at me but it pings off of a lower branch. They stand around like hungry wolves, pacing, talking in low, frustrated voices to each other.

I breathe, safe for the moment. I bet the Capitol liked watching that little episode-I also bet the Gamemakers were thinking twice about my five in training. As I gently stretch my screaming muscles, I hear a familiar sound. My head whips around. My eyes rest on a dark shape, swinging slightly in the rain.

Not three feet away from me is a humming nest of tracker-jackers.


	7. Chapter 7

~7~

"Why don't you come down?" One of them asks and with a jolt, I realize it's Jonah. He's got blood on his cheeks like war paint and has a nasty curved blade in each of his hands.

"No, thanks," I call down.

"Come down, we can have a nice chat!" Says the big District 1 boy with a wicked grin.

"I can hear you perfectly fine from up here." I reply. I take out my water and sip at it. I'm still shaking.

They don't leave. Instead they settle down and make a small fire, and then they're roasting what smells deliciously like rabbit and the smell wafts up to me. Ha, ha, nice try.

I take out one of the skinny, oblong radishes from my pocket and inhale it's tangy sent. I recline on my branch with that ever-so-helpful cord holding me in place with my tarp over me and I nibble at the radish. My eyes stay trained on that slightly swinging nest and my ears stay open to the sounds of the Careers.

Here was my way out of being trapped in a tree; this nest. There was something about what Collin had warned me about, however, that made me reluctant. For the rest of the day, I thought of all my options out of this mess, but they all pointed back to the nest. Yes, it was predictable; I've definitely seen, in previous games, tributes drop nests on other tributes heads before. But what else could I do, really? Why not take what's so generously handed to me?

_But I wasn't supposed to give away my secrets! That's what Collin told me to do._ I really wished I could ask him, I wish he were here to help me. At least I knew that he was watching me.

As the sky grew dark and the Career's fire was a luminous glow underneath me, I whispered, softly, to the night, "What am I supposed to do?"

As the anthem played and with it the news that there were no new deaths today, my question was answered. A little parachute floated down from the sky into my lap, with a tiny rectangular box attached. I picked it up warily and opened it. Inside was a small, silver switchblade. It would appear that my mentor had made up my mind for me.

~.~

It was early dawn. The sudden cracking sound that woke me this time was not cannon fire, but something a lot closer. Instantly alert, I peeked down below. The girl from District 2 was in the tree and was accenting slowly, hauling what looked like a set of blades with her.

"Get up as high as you can go, Opal," One of them was saying quietly, assuming I was still asleep and didn't hear. "Get in range-shoot her down,"

_Will being terrified all the time ever stop? _I thought to myself as yet again my heart started going crazy and my stomach clenched up. I moved slowly. Unfortunately, I didn't have much time to be reluctant about my plan anymore. It was now or it was never.

I began in inch along the branch, the switchblade in hand. I didn't know if they could see the nest from all the way down there so I didn't know if they would be able to tell what I was doing. Also unfortunately, it became obvious pretty fast.

I didn't have time for hesitation. In a second I'd grabbed hold of the base of the nest and cut it free from the branch that held it. Ah, well, so much for originality. I could imagine hearing the gasps from the viewers in the Capitol as I held onto the nest and aimed carefully. Several large, gold wasps came out and buzzed angrily around me, but as usual, did not harm me.

Opal noticed first. Her great green eyes went wide.

"Are you crazy?" she screamed and backpedaled instantly, trying to get down. The ones on the ground couldn't see, didn't exactly know what was going on.

_Crazy? _I thought. _Never crazy. Just desperate._

And when I let go of the nest my carefully harbored secret when with it.

It hit Opal right in the chest and sent her tumbling. When it hit the ground, the gold cloud that rose up from it sent them running. The boys were the luckiest. I think they got away. Opal never got up from where she had fallen. Fuchsia had collapsed fifty meters off. I tried to close my eyes and my ears from the screaming. I clung to the trunk, burying my head to hide my tears. And then the cannon blasts. One, two.

And then silence.

Two girls were dead, and I was the monster that did it.

I allow myself five minutes and then I shove away the pain. I can't let this affect me. Too much was at stake; my life, for instance.

The sky grows dark for a moment and a claw shoots down from the sky to pick up the bodies of the girls. I pack up my things, eat a radish, and slowly climb down. I'm pretty confident that the careers will not be back for a while, if they come back at all. Lucky for me, there are a handful of things they'd left behind. One of them had a sleeping bag, much better and warmer than my tarp, and I roll it up without hesitation and pack it away. I also take some of their food-leftover cooked rabbit. I don't take all of it though. It doesn't feel right.

A few stray tracker-jackers are still zooming around angrily. They buzz around me. _Go away! Go away!,_ they seem to say. I let one land on my wrist for a moment, it's metallic feet scrape at my skin as it takes off again. Well, I figured now Panem knew about me it wouldn't do anymore damage to put on a show.

"Thanks, little friends," I murmur. As I walk away from the scene, I feel numb. A weak sun peers through the clouds in the white sky. It's a hopeful sign, I guess, but I can't shake off the guilt of what I had just done and the foreboding I felt that I had somehow made the wrong decision.

~.~

I should have been suspicious when I started seeing wild radish and potato root plants everywhere, but I wasn't. I was just grateful. They weren't the best raw but starting a fire without matches or something similar would be impossible in this wetland. Speaking of wetland, I wasn't sure why, but there was something about the swamp that was drawing. I walked along it's edge for the longest time, just within the tree line. I had this feeling that it was going to be important soon, like it wasn't just put there for no reason.

I new feeling set itself upon me today. Loneliness. How many days had I been in the arena? I'd lost count. How many people have I seen? Apart from the glimpse of the District 9 girl, just the four Careers and they'd tried to kill me. I haven't even seen much wildlife, just birds and squirrels. It was an awful feeling, just this pit in my chest. I missed my home and especially my family. I missed my best friend, May.

Not that I ever wanted to be in the arena in the first place, but now it was really getting to me-the isolation. The disconnectedness. Where was everyone, for goodness sake?

I felt so alone.

How many people were left? I try going through them in my head as I collect rainwater off of wide, waxy leaves. The boy from District 1 was still alive, no news on the weedy District 3 girl for a while. Jonah. The May-look-alike Eva, I was pretty sure was still alive. Rowan and I. 8, 9, and 10 were all gone. District 11-now, that was I district that's definitely kept it low. I remembered them from the interviews. Pomona and Besan, I think their names were. Two strong, dark-skinned tributes with a lot of pride and cunning. They probably formed and alliance and were lying low somewhere, secretly plotting their victory. I wouldn't put it passed them; they looked like a smart pair. Lastly I think was the 12 girl, who I remembered nothing about at all. I counted on my fingers. Nine left. Eight more to die. The bets in the Capitol must be going haywire as the number of tributes becomes less and less.

It was so quiet. The quiet before a storm, perhaps. As the afternoon fades I find a tree. It feels tedious to climb it. Then comes the cannon blast that I can almost feel vibrate through me, and all I can think is: _Seven more to go. _

As I settle down, wrapped in the sleeping bag I had stolen from the dead, I feel sick. Not sick, not poison sick. Emotionally sick. I stare up at the dry, expressionless sky, white as chalk turning into a dark soot gray.

And I see it.

I must not have seen it at first because of the needles that partially hid it, but it was there. Another tracker-jacker nest. Hanging an arm's reach away. Coincidence? I wasn't so sure. It was definitely weird, like it was put there on purpose by the Gamemakers just to see some more entertaining deaths. If it was purposely put there, it was probably because of the events that morning. Suddenly, I remembered what Collin had told me, in the early morning hours as I was heading off to bed._ "Don't give away your secrets, more often then not they'll use them against you." _

They knew it now, but they _weren't_ using them against me? _Not_ developing a new strain of wasps that did harm me or were extra vicious? Were they? Maybe the arena was just turning me into a paranoid mess. I decide to not think about it everything bad the nest being there could mean, so I just sit and nibble on the morsels of rabbit and roots and wait for the sky to get dark so I can be reminded that I murdered two people today. I wait.

Then from below me, I hear the rustling of leaves, staggered footsteps. And then I hear, in a cracked whisper, a familiar voice call out my name.

**A/N: ***gasp* Another cliffhanger! Oh my gosh!  
Hello, there, readers! This is just a reminder to please review this story, I really appreciate feedback!


	8. Chapter 8

~8~

"Fern?"

"Rowan?" Disbelieving, I search in the dusky-gray light until I saw him, at the base of my tree, one arm on a branch, one supporting a limp figure. When he sees me his grimy, ashen face lights up.

"It is you!" He says and I hear the relief in his voice. I sit up and untangle myself from the sleeping bag. Honestly, I wasn't sure if I ever really liked this kid, but I was beyond joy at the sight of him. He had a part of my home in him, something familiar in this nightmare.

Rowan babbles. "I knew that you'd be...well, I knew you were alive but I wasn't sure...I was afraid...you wouldn't be able..." He stops, looks anxiously at the figure under his arm.

"Rowan," I say warily, really noticing what it was this time, "_Who_ is that?"

He looks scared and anxious all over again. When he speaks, he sounds really upset, like he's about to cry. "She...she needs help...I don't know what to do," He gently lays the girl down against the trunk and I see locks of matted, but unmistakably curly hair, and I realize the girl is Eva. The one who looked like May.

Awesome.

"I'll come up," Rowan says. "We need to talk."

"No, Rowan, don't," I call. "There's a tracker-jacker nest up here. I'll...I'll come down."

I wasn't too thrilled about being on the ground in the near-darkness, but I go, quickly shoving my things into my pockets just...just in case I won't be coming back up.

My decent is quick and soon enough I'm standing right beside the boy and the moaning girl on the ground. Rowan stares at me a moment and then he's got he arms around my shoulders and he's hugging me.

"It's so amazing you're still alive," he whimpers into my shoulder.

"You, too," I say uncertainly. This was not the same Rowan who'd gone into the arena.

"You're the only one I really trust in here. I was so afraid I'd be alone." he says.

Definitely not the same Rowan. The old Rowan was quiet and passive. The new one was full of energy and emotion, and had probably said more in the past thirty seconds than I have heard him say before the arena.

He's let go and gone back to the Eva. I step closer to her, too. She's barely awake. She has a cloth wrapped around her head, the part over her forehead is stained dark with blood. She's pale, even paler than Rowan, and she's shaking. I've seen enough of sick to know that she was in bad shape. A fever, a head wound. Oh brother.

"What am I supposed to do, Rowan?" I ask, gently. I didn't have any supplies, I was hardly a healer, this was the Hunger Games for goodness sake.

He looks desperate. "I don't know. You're good with plants, aren't you? Anything to bring down a fever?" He takes hold of my arm. "Just don't let her die, okay?"

Eva must really mean something to Rowan for him to have hauled her all the way to find me. And then to be so desperate to keep her alive.

"I won't be able to find anything tonight, it's nearly dark."

"I have a flashlight!" Rowan pulls the thing out and pushes it into my hands. "Fern, please." He starts to sound frantic.

"Rowan, it's too dangerous in the dark-"

"Please!" He pleads and his voice is shaking and his whole body is shaking, too. "Try, at least. She can't die like this."

Before either of us can say anything else, the roar of the anthem echos throughout the trees. We look up to the sky as the pictures flash across it.

"Someone got to the Careers," Rowan says, momentarily distracted.

I try not to look. I avert my eyes from the faces of Fuchsia and Opal. The last face to show is the girl from District 3. So that District 1 boy and Jonah had survived the wasps. I sigh. I hated the feeling of guilt. I felt like a coward, hiding and running away. Being too scared to look for herbs in the dark. Didn't I owe myself, at least, to do something good? Something that might actually save a life instead of take one away? Even if it was dangerous?

"How...how long has she been like this?" I ask Rowan when the Capitol seal fades away from the sky.

"Nearly a day and a half and she hasn't been conscious for most of it." He replies, crouching down next to her. He looks at me with that pleading expression. "Will you try?"

I pause in the dark. "Okay," I say at last. "I'll look."

And I do, with Rowan's flashlight I scanned the forest floor looking for the right herbs. I felt horribly conspicuous, even with Rowan promising to watch my back. Back home there were a couple plants that I knew would help, but finding them here was a search in vain. I just didn't know the plants well enough.

When fatigue grips my back and rain falls, making silver sparkles in the flashlight beam, I turn in. I go back to Rowan empty-handed and he helps me suspend my tarp in the low branches over the three of us to keep off the rain.

Between the two of them they had a sleeping bag, and we help the nearly unconscious Eva into it. She's burning up.

"I don't understand why her sponsors haven't helped out yet," Rowan says worriedly as we take apart an extra shirt Rowan had in his bag and soak it in the gathering rain, laying fragments on Eva's face. "They gave her all sorts of things at first."

"Maybe they thought her injuries were going to kill her." I say. _Or that I would._

"I guess they didn't predict that I'd find you to help, then." An expression dawns on Rowan's face as something hits him. He crawls a few feet out into the rain and opens his arms wide to the sky. "What's it going to be?" He calls in a kind of hushed stage-whisper. "Are you going to let her die or what?"

"Rowan!" I hiss, but then stop. A few moment's pass, then, I watch in amazement as a little silver parachute floats peacefully down into the hands of the beaming boy.

~.~

"So, are you going to tell me what's happened since I last saw you?" I ask Rowan as we share bits of rabbit. We've settled under the tree, with my sleeping bag laid across our legs like a blanket to keep off the chill. The parachute from Eva's District had what she needed, pills to take down the fever, clean bandages, even a little bowl of hot soup. The girl was now sound asleep slumped against the tree trunk, and Rowan was feeling much better about things.

"What do you want to know?" He asks.

"Anything," I say. It was so good to talk to some one friendly, especially because I was beginning to like this transformed Rowan more and more.

"Well," he says, "Right from the start I kind of knew I wouldn't have a chance in the bloodbath, so when that gong went off I just ran."

"Me too," I say.

"I think I saw you-you were really fast."

"Thanks."

"Anyway," he continued, "Right from the start I ran into this...I don't know what the hell it was...It looked like this giant angry pig with tusks like tree trunks...It chased me up a tree and then I swore it was going to up root the thing, but it got bored, or something, and left after a while."

"I haven't seen anything like that," I tell him. The thought kind of scared me.

"You're lucky, then."

"What then? How did you meet Eva?"

"On the second day one of the Careers, it was that boy from District 2, he found me, and chased me into that mushy field area, did you ever see it?"

"No," I say, drinking in the information.

"It's on the other side of the swamp. It's this great open area filled with tall grasses and rotting little trees and the ground is wet and you sink when you step in it. It's horrible, and it smells. He chased me into it and there were this plants all over the place that slice you're skin and they sting like crazy and they don't stop stinging." He shows me, briefly with his flashlight, red welts on his arms. "He nearly had me, but then Eva showed up and she had stabbed him, and I was afraid she'd want to kill me too, but then she was helping me up and telling me she wanted to be allies."

Rowan stops talking and looks at the sleeping form of Eva. I can't see his face in the dark.

"I don't know why she wanted to be allies," He says after a minute. "I was weak. I had nothing to offer."

"Don't say that," I say.

"But it's true." He looks away. "I've just been a burden to her. So I was good at collecting food, so what, she could hunt, she did all the fighting. I couldn't even help her when that giant bear was trying to kill us and took that chunk out of her head. I was weak. I didn't know how to help her." His last words hang in an uncomfortable silence.

"Giant bear?" I ask. It was all I could think of to say. Rowan's brutal honesty was something I wasn't used to and I was kind of taken aback.

"Yeah, it's a great brown monster that lumbers around in the woods some places. Still out there, probably."

"That's...comforting."

I think Rowan smiles. He curls up under the sleeping bag like he's ready to sleep.

"We should take watches," I tell him. "I don't mind going first if you want to sleep now." I'm tired, but being on the ground has got me really tense so I didn't think that I would be able to sleep anyway. Rowan doesn't say anything for a while, so I think he's fallen asleep, but then I hear his sleepy voice. "What about you, Fern? What's happened?"

I wrap my jacket tight around me and my whisper sounds too loud in the darkness and the gentle rain.

"Nothing," I say slowly. "Nothing really has happened. I've just been sitting in trees by myself eating radishes. And except for a little episode where I had to drop a tracker-jacker nest on the career's heads-"

"What? Did you really?" Rowan interrupts me, shock in his voice, then realization. "So it was you who killed those two Careers today?"

It's my turn to look away. It wasn't my ideal conversation, but it was my fault for telling him in the first place. "Yeah," I say. "I don't really want to talk about it."

He's quiet for a moment, and I think he might actually drop the subject, but then he says, "I've heard about you, you know. About what you can do."

"News gets around, I guess."

"You're really lucky," he says earnestly.

I roll my eyes. "I've heard that one before."

"You have something that no one else has, and it's been so useful to you. I bet there are a ton of people who'd want to have that immunity."

"Hey," I say, "Immunity or not I'm still in the Hunger Games."

I hear him sigh. He rolls over and doesn't say anything more. After a little while I can hear his even sleep-breathing. I sit with my arms wrapped around my legs and my head on my knees and stare out into the darkness. I listen to the rain fall and the steady breathing of my new companions. And I savor the feeling of no longer being alone. Of not feeling that afraid.

**A/N:** Here I am the pesky review beggar. Review review review! (please)  
Thanks, as always.


	9. Chapter 9

**A/N:** Hi!  
I'm sorry that it has to happen. Really.

TTE

~9~

In the morning when Eva's fever broke and she woke with a start, alert and ravenous, we ate the rest of the rabbit and a good amount of my root plants for breakfast. We talk, and Eva thanks me for all my help.

"Rowan could have done just as well on his own," I tell her. "Really, I didn't do much at all."

Eva looks at me thoughtfully with wise blue eyes, stops Rowan before he can protest my statement. "I think it was smart of Rowan to find you, actually," she says slowly, "You provided a cool head. All Rowan does is worry, and that makes it hard to make the right decisions."

"Hey, I'm right here," Rowan mumbles grumpily. "And I don't worry all the time."

Eva makes a noise of disbelief. She's sitting up against the tree trunk, her legs in her sleeping bag. She looks tired and worn, but the color has gone back into her cheeks.

We sit and talk for most of the morning, and it was peaceful and comforting to just forget about the arena for a few hours. It's around noon buy the time I get up and stretch.

"I have to find more food," I say. "It shouldn't take long, those radishes are everywhere around here."

"Don't go alone," Rowan pleads, jumping up. "Let me come with you."

"But what about-"

"I can manage on my own," Eva interjects, somewhat coolly. "As long as you two stay in shouting distance I'll be fine."

I didn't want to go alone anyway, not really. So Rowan and I go and scout out around in a fifty meter radius.

I find a patch quickly, just as I thought I would. As we pull up the tubers, Rowan, in apparent high spirits, talks to me.

"What would we do with all that money if one of us won?" He asks.

I hadn't really thought of that before and I tell him so.

"I know what I'd do," he says matter-of-factly. "I'd buy all the food in the world, and feed everyone with it. Everyone in the district will have enough to eat. And I'd buy machines for the hand-workers so they don't have to work themselves to death. And I'd buy enough supplies for the healers so we'd never be stuck with a fever and nothing to help the sick with."

"Wow," I say. "You've really thought this out."

"I have." His expression becomes suddenly stony. "I don't want my family to be hungry anymore. I don't want anyone else to die when it could have been avoided. That's why I've decided that one of us has to win."

He looks so serious. His words sound much older than a thirteen-year-old's. I guess the acceptance of the fact that you may die any day ages a person. _I_ definitely felt older.

"Alright," I say, sticking my dirt-smeared fist out to bump his. "Let's win this thing!"

He grins.

And then we hear Eva's scream.

For a split-second we just stare at one another wide-eyed, then, electrified, we're sprinting back to the tree. We reach it, expecting the worst; a tribute going in for the kill, or one of the infamous giant beasts. However, all we see is Eva, looking scared, pointing to something in the distant brush.

"What..." she whispers, "...is that?"

We follow her line of sight. There, growing steadily larger, a black mass was coming towards us, appearing to seep through the trees like spilled oil. We look around and see that the mass has formed a black line that stretches in a wide ark on our left as far as we could see.

And then we hear it. Rustling, metallic clicking, like scissors. The sound of thousands of tiny feet charging across the wet forest floor. There was no doubt that it was bad. Very bad.

"I think," I say, backing away from the advancing threat, "the Gamemakers want us to run."

They don't argue. The instinct to flee drove our feet as we ran, Rowan and I helping the groggy, limping Eva. The mass kept on advancing, getting closer and closer. Soon I could make out individual shapes in the mob, many-legged, many-eyed, hairy things that moved jerkily like leaves in the wind, skittering with ease through the undergrowth, gaining on us.

"They...they look like spiders!" Rowan yells.

They did. A lot. Knowing the Hunger Games, if that mob reached us, nothing good would result. Fleeing was all we could do. We had to find a place to escape the stampede. If they really were spiders they were much larger than I have ever seen, with agile, sticky limbs that could climb over anything, Escaping up into a tree wouldn't help this time.

I realized what we were heading towards as we tried to out run the ink-black arachnids. I think I had always known.

There was, after all, only one place left to go. A place, no doubt, the remaining tributes were all fleeing to at this very moment.

The swamp was our final refuge. I could see it emerge through the trees, misty and ominous. As we sprint for it, I hope against hope that the spiders do not like water, otherwise, we were all dead.

W were so close to breaking through the trees when Eva screamed in pain. One of the spiders had sprung at her, latched itself onto her leg and sunk it's fangs in. She was limping, the swarm threatening to engulf her, engulf all of us. Rowan and I managed to kick it off, and were kicking at the spiders left and right until we finally broke though, splashing into the murky water, exhausted and sweating. Luck was on our side, for the swarm didn't touch the water. They lined up around the edge, however, and as far as I could see, they formed a wall at the shore, trapping us in.

I was gasping, heart pounding. Eva had collapsed against a tree and was whimpering, blood and something blackish was oozing down her torn pant leg.

"Eva," Rowan sloshed to her her side, heaving for air and reaching for her.

"Don't touch it!" She hisses sharply. Her face was contorted with pain and she slid down the tree enough to submerge the bite in the water.

"That was too close," I say, clutching at my side. The water that rises up to my knees is freezing, the mist is impenetrable. "Are you okay, Eva?"

" 'S just a spider bite," she says through her teeth. "Nothing I can't handle."

All I could think of was that there was no doubt those spiders had poisonous venom, but it was a dreadful thought. Dreadful, because there was nothing any of us could do about it. I just hoped that it wouldn't be fatal.

"Where do you think the other tributes are?" Rowan asks me quietly, his black eyes shifting around the mist nervously.

"Somewhere near," I reply, just as quietly. "Let's get Eva out of the water."

She seemed to have lost the strength to resist, so with our combined efforts, we lift Eva up and lay her across the trunk of a fallen tree, suspended several inches over the swamp surface nearby. Eva lay with her eyes shut tight and her mouth a thin line.

Mobility was tough. Every step was a squish into the muddy bottom. The tall boots only went so high, and water would trickle in and freeze my ankles. Rowan and I stood back to back and peered into the fog and waited for the inevitable.

All was quiet except the foreboding rustling-clicking noise of the poised spiders, which waved their many legs as if beckoning us over to them. We listened, ready for the splashing of feet in water, anything that might suggest a fellow tribute.

Then, somewhere deeper in the swamp, a girl screamed.

We both whirl in the direction, but everything is white and gray. And then cannon fire scares the birds from the trees. A couple heartbeats later, another one. I take a few steps away, trying to peer around trees.

Rowan turns to me. "I don't like this," he says.

From behind him, I see Eva slowly sit up, and slide her feet into the water. Her head is bent, so I can't see her face behind the matted curls. At first I feel relief that she may have overcome the initial aftereffect of the spider bite, but then I see something silver slide out from her pocket, a strange emptiness in her eyes as she lifts her head, and then the knife lodges itself into Rowan's back before I can even scream.

The boy's face freezes with his eyes wide and mouth slightly open, and the sound of the second cannon fire blasts through me before his body even splashes into the water, with a finality that tore me apart.

I have no voice, just eyes that stare at the fallen boy, and at Eva, who is slowly wading towards me. Something was seriously wrong with her. She was pale as death, her eyes had gone all dull and bloodshot. She moved as though asleep with no expression on her face.

It couldn't have been the real Eva who had thrown that knife. It was possessed Eva. Poisoned Eva. Dying Eva.

I felt like I would never move again, but my feet were slowly taking me backwards away from the girl. Watched her pull the blade from Rowan's back without even blinking. His blood staining the water, the sickness rising in my throat.

"Eva..." I croak, still backing away. "You've been poisoned, this isn't you... You wouldn't do this, Eva..." I already knew my words were useless. There was no getting through to the girl. This was just like the Gamemakers, making a spider whose bite makes you go crazy and kill your friends. They were so sick.

Eva had stopped with her knife raised in her hand, her mouth moving, saying something so quietly I couldn't hear. My heart was beating a mile a minute, and I finally caught on to the words she was saying, three words, over and over. _Kill the others_.

Then two people emerged from the fog at a run, leaping from fallen tree to fallen tree. As quiet as wildcats, they jumped on Eva. She didn't have time to raise her knife, she didn't have time to scream. The boy broke her neck in a swift, practiced movement, and the girl who looked like May slipped silently into the water as we heard the third cannon.

The newcomers don't give me any time for a reaction, for the girl lunges at me, seizes me across the shoulders and presses something cold against my neck.

This was it. Everything froze. I held my breath. The girl, who I recognized now was Pomona from District 11, was so large she nearly lifted me off my feet as she held me there, her breathing coming hard by my ear.

I close my eyes. _Let her do it,_ I think_, I don't deserve to win this. I don't want to see anyone else get killed. Let her kill me._

"What do you mean?" Pomona hisses at the boy. "It's just a spider bite."

_I'm sorry I won't get to see my family again._

"So what if it got you twice, Besan! You've dealt with worse!"

Why had Pomona not done it yet? I open my eyes. Besan is standing by Eva's body, clutching at a spot on his leg, and his arm is also sporting a bite identical to Eva's. He's even bigger than Pomona, all height and muscle, but his face has taken on a sick tinge.

"They burn," he says weakly, and then he collapses. When Pomona relinquishes her hold on me and splashes over to her fallen companion, my knees give way and I kneel in the water and muck. A trickle of blood runs down my neck. I'm long passed sickness, though tears are leaking out of my eyes, and I'm shaking and heaving.

"Don't!" I choke out after her without thinking, even though this _was_ the girl who was about ready to kill me a second ago. "The spider venom...will make him...go crazy."

Pomona turns to me, looking down at me with her proud features even from several yards away. She gives me a long, piercing look before kneeling down to help Besan.

"And we all aren't already?" She replies cooly.

Besan is extending a hand to Pomona.

"Don't." I can't bring myself to move. My voice is weak.

Besan gets up, and slowly, deliberately, his hands close around Pomona's neck before she realizes what he's doing.

"No!" Pomona chokes, and she slashes out with her knife. "We were so close, dammit!" She's struggling, but Besan is stronger than she is. No matter how she slashed him, the possessed body did not let go, did not seem to feel pain. And then it was over. The cannon blast.

Besan drops Pomona, and staggers back, hand pressed against his bleeding neck, his eyes rolling up into his head. He gasps for air, blood leaks from the corners of his mouth and he mouths noiselessly, like a fish, and I realize it's those same three words. Repeated, like a robot.

_Kill the others._

Then he falls face first into the water and I was left, crumpled, in the shallows.

Dead. Everyone was dead, dying, gone forever. Stolen in a blink of the eye. How could I have been so happy this morning, sharing food with Rowan and Eva? How could I have let myself forget about where I was for even a moment, when the consequences were so instantaneous and unbearable? How could I have let myself forget that all around me people had been dying, and I have just been hiding. Like a coward.

I had lost track of the deaths today. If I was the last one something would have happened by now. There must be other tributes alive still. Two, maybe? One left? I don't know how long I knelled there. I could have died right then and there for all I cared. From behind me, the massive spiders were still rustling their many limbs and clicking their many pincers, and it created a sort of background noise that was lost with all coherent thought.

Hovercrafts come after a while, and great claws snatch up the bodies of Pomona and Besan, Eva and Rowan. They leave a deafening silence behind them, and in that silence comes a new noise. Gentle, sloshing footsteps, a figure appearing out of the mist.

"Well," says Jonah, "that was all rather unpleasant."


	10. Chapter 10

**A/N:** Hey everyone! Sorry about the long wait for this one-I have to say it was the hardest to write. I'd also like to mention that this ISN'T the last chapter, even though it is the last in the arena. So please, come back! (And review! DO IT.)

TTE

~10~

I don't know what to think at first. All I could do was just stare at the boy from District 4, wading closer and closer to me. For once he is not armed, or at least not holding anything deadly in either of his hands. Jonah looked like he'd been through a fair few fights, with his clothing torn and multiple dirty-looking bandages around his arms, his legs, and one tightly wrapping his left shoulder. I could see welts from what could only be tracker-jacker stings as well. He looks like he hasn't attempted to wash since the beginning of the games, and even from a distance, I can see he's practically caked with muck, like he'd been rolling around in a mud pit. Then again, I probably was no cleaner. I hadn't seen even a reflection of myself for days.

How pathetic I must look, kneeling in the muck without any strength to move.

What an easy target.

Of course Jonah would finish me off in a heartbeat-he was capable enough. Bigger, stronger, and appearing to be more emotionally together than I was.

I wanted him to do it. I didn't want to live with Rowan dying over and over behind my eyelids, the dead being picked up by claws and knowing that I did nothing-was not strong enough to do anything to help them.

Jonah stopped a couple yards away. There was an odd expression on his face that I couldn't identify. Nonchalant, almost. Calculating. And then he spoke.

"Hello, honeybee," he said softly.

Something clicked in my head. The nickname-who knew how Jonah knew it's significance-had set something off. It had to do with something I held deep in my heart and had buried since I had entered the arena, something about the pendant that hung from my neck.

Fern Riley had a life before this one, as hard as it was to believe, to remember. A home and a family. The Capitol had stolen away her future, but she was still here, breathing. Fern Riley was still alive, with a beating heart, people she loved who were praying every minute that she'd come home safe, people who needed her.

I could not just lay down my head and wait for death. It was not an option anymore, not with the end so near.

With a strong sense of determination, I rise from the cold water, droplets rolling off my jacket and pants and landing with plunks onto the surface. I look back at Jonah, stare right into his stormy eyes.

Then a booming voice fills the air, and our heads snap up to the sky.

"Congratulations, Districts four and seven, the final contestants!" It's Claudius Templesmith. "Good luck to you both and may the odds be ever in your favor!"

It's gone as soon as it came, and silence fills the swamp once more.

This was it then.

"Just us," I say evenly.

"It appears so," he replies.

Then I bolt. The nearest tree is one of the swamp ones, and is tall with only few branches higher up. I splash to the trunk and leap at it, haul myself up with my arms and legs gripping it tightly, and with a surprisingly clear head as I push everything else out of my mind.

"Great. So you're just going to climb up another tree, are you?" Jonah is wading calmly over, a hint of exasperation in his voice.

"Yes," I say, voice straining with effort as a haul myself up the trunk. "Know why?" Haul. "One, I don't have any weapons." Haul. "Two, you're twice as big as me and several times more experienced with it comes to fighting." Haul. "Three, if I'm ever going to go home again, I need think." I make it to the first branch that would support me and rest, grateful to no longer be in the water, and to have Jonah be such wonderful distraction to keep my mind from drifting back to the terrors hiding there.

"Fair enough." Jonah replies, making no effort to come after me, actually sitting down on a fallen tree. "Just keep in mind, the longer you stay up there the longer we're going to be in here."

I settle in, hide my face in my hood. I just want a moment to not be seen by the cameras. A moment of privacy.

What was I supposed to do now? I had barely scraped by on the hesitations of my opponents. Pomona's hesitation. Jonah not stabbing me through the second he saw me. Was I such a weak contestant that they didn't even bother with me?

So what was pathetic ol' Fern supposed to do now with a highly capable killer between her and a way out of this mess?

As darkness falls, neither of us move or speak. The anthem plays, and I force myself to look at the faces projected in the sky. There was District 1. I wonder, did Jonah kill him? Or the spiders...? After the picture fades, Eva's appears, looking healthy and peaceful, quite different from the one I had known. And then it's Rowan's thin child's face, and I wonder what the people of my District were feeling. Surely they were ecstatic about my still being in the running, but I desperately hoped that his loss was not overlooked, his family not ignored. Pomona's picture appears and then Besan's. Lastly, the girl from District 12, who must have been that first cannon fire. The first victim of the spiders. The sky darkens but I still stare up at the tree tops.

And then I see the wasp nest.

_Are you serious!_ I almost shout in exasperation at the Gamemakers.

I obviously can guess why it is there. But I refuse. I wouldn't do it. I wouldn't end it like that. Not again.

But I knew I didn't really have many options.

For some reason, I really began to hate myself.

~.~

With the morning came an uncomfortable chill and a fog so thick, I could barely see two feet in front of me. But for some weird reason, I could see Jonah quite clearly, a couple yards away from the base of my tree.

I stare at him, appearing to be dosing, reclined on his fallen tree. It occurred to me that despite the dirt and blood, Jonah was still very handsome. There was most likely a load of bets being placed in his favor. I, however, probably looked like some overlarge, scruffy squirrel stuck up in the tree. Most viewers probably thought I was a goner.

I shift around on my limb, trying, in vain, to relieve my cramped muscles. Then I hear Jonah, his voice drifting up strangely to me through the mist.

"Better get a move on, Honeybee. The Capitol doesn't like waiting."

"Why do you call me that?" I ask, slightly annoyed.

"It's your token, isn't it?" He replies, propping up his head with his arms behind it. "I found it very fitting."

My hand automatically jumps to the bee pendent. I had nearly forgotten I had been wearing it. I almost smile. "Oh yeah? And what am I supposed to call you?"

Jonah flashes a smile from under his visor. " 'Talon' would be just fine," he says, waving his wrist in the air, where what looks like a woven bracelet with what must be a talon stuck artistically into it.

I sigh. We sit in silence for a while. Then I ask, softly, "If I were to come down, would you kill me?"

"No guarantee." He said without looking up.

We go back to silence.

The nest is swinging slightly though there is no wind, as though urging me to set it free. I try not to look at it. It wouldn't be fair.

Not that the games were ever fair. Even so, I felt like every tribute can hold onto at least a sliver of morality, and it is that that makes me feel like dropping the nest on Jonah's head would be wrong. I just wished that, in the end, it wasn't my only option.

Sitting in that tree gave me a lot of time to think, and I started to wonder, how did I actually make it this far? Tributes like me do not usually make it this far unless they were lucky. Well, I _have_ been really, _really_ lucky.

It had actually gotten to the point of weird, I just had been so caught up with everything that I hadn't really thought about it. The sudden abundance of my root vegetables, the nests up every tree, the last few tributes conveniently killing each other off. Were the Gamemakers trying to get me to win? It seemed crazy. Well, maybe the Gamemakers were crazy but they were definitely not biased. Besides, they probably weren't allowed to do that kind of thing anyway. I've been lucky, that's all. Just lucky.

And suddenly the silence of the swamp was deafening. I sat up quickly-not a great idea when you're up a tree- and grabbed at the trunk to balance myself. Jonah had sat up, too.

I quickly realized what had changed. The spiders had gone. Disappeared. Not a bird was chirping, nor did wind rustle the leaves on the trees. The hum of the tracker-jacker nest had also quieted.

None of these things were good signs.

"Something bad is coming," I say.

"About time," says Jonah.

"If I were you," I say slowly, "I wouldn't feel so safe out in the open like that,"

"Lucky you're not me, then." He doesn't look up but I can see he's grinning a perfect white smile. "Or else I wouldn't know you can't run away in the Hunger Games. Ever."

I'm still trying to figure out exactly what he meant by that, when the massive black shape materializes out of the fog. Silent as a shadow.

It's the biggest bear I've ever seen. 10 feet tall on all fours, spear-like yellow fangs, eyes that glow yellow in the mist.

It lets out a low, menacing growl and stomps it's massive paws. I had no doubt that this was the giant bear Rowan had mentioned, the one that had taken a chunk out of Eva's head, come back to finish the last of us off.

At the sight of it, Jonah whips around, pulling one of his serrated, curved blades from his coat and faces the monster, for all the world like he actually planed to fight it.

"Run!" I scream at Jonah without thinking. "If you injure it you'll just provoke it! Get out of there!"

Why? What was my problem? This was my golden opportunity. I should just let the bear tear him to pieces. I could go back to District 7, to my family. Jonah had nothing to do with me. He was a cold-blooded killer. I should be able to just sit here and let the inevitable unfold.

I feel like time slows down. And suddenly I know the answer why. It had to do with the crazy boy who made piles of stones in the street of my District. It had to do with his careless slaughter of innocent strays, when I realized how repulsive an unnecessary death was.

The bear lets out a horrible screaming roar, charges, and like he actually thinks he had a shot in the battle, Jonah does too. I close my eyes, and a rushing sound fills my head.

_Do it now_, I tell myself.

It's like I can't even hear the fight going on below me. Slowly, roboticly, I pull the switchblade from my pocket, and I reach for the tracker jacker nest.

_I just need to get rid of the bear, _I think. _Get rid of the bear._

It wouldn't work if I just threw the nest at the bear like I did with the careers. The nest would split open and the wasps would go everywhere, even if I actually managed to hit it. The only way I could get the wasps to focus completely on the bear was to have the _bear_ destroy the nest.

When I cut it free from the limb, I'm so full of adrenaline that I can no longer think about the danger or the consequences of my feeble plan. All I know is that I don't want Jonah to be torn to pieces by a demonic creation of the Gamemakers.

Luckily, I know how to jump from a tree without snapping the bones in my legs.

I don't think. I just go, the nest tucked under my arm, a halo of angry wasps circling my head.

I land right between the two with a great splash, and in less than a second, I've whirled around, and hurled the nest into the bear's gaping, deadly jaws.

"Get down!" I scream, pushing the boy in the chest. Jonah's so surprised he stumbles and falls backwards into the water, right as the nest is crushed in the bears jaws, and a massive cloud of gold explodes from it. The bear howls in anger and pain as hundreds of wasps attack. Jabbing, stinging, relentless.

Jonah's smart enough to stay under the cover of the water, and I think he avoid the worst of it. I've stumbled back until I ran into a fallen tree where I collapse on it, hold onto myself, shake.

As far as the bear is concerned, we no longer exist. It writhes and bellows for an eternity. Finally, it turns and flees, crashing through the swamp, and is instantly swallowed by the fog. The last few tracker jackers follow after it, leaving us in silence.

It was over.

Trembling, I peek around my hood. I see Jonah trying to rise from the water, he clings to the nearest tree trunk and collapses against it, waist deep in the murky water. And I realize I had been too late, and there's blood on my hands from when I pushed him, which must have only come from his chest.

I stare at my hands, not really seeing them. I make up my mind.

Slowly, deliberately, I wade over to him. I wasn't afraid anymore.

Jonah's face is pale and sweaty, and I see the bear's work; three great slashes across is chest, glistening and crimson. His breathing is labored, but when I reach him his eyes open and focus on me.

Jonah smiles weakly. "Where'd you get that ability, Honeybee?"

It took me a second, but I realized he was talking about my immunity.

"It was a little something I picked up a long time ago." I say.

"It's amazing. No wonder the Capitol wants it."

"What?" I say, taken aback. Jonah's eyes are fluttering. I raise my voice. "What do you mean, Jonah?"

He shakes his head, slowly, back and forth. His fingers make a weak gesture. _Closer._

Hesitantly, I lean in.

"What do you think I mean?" He whispers, so quiet I could barely hear. "They want you alive."

I stare at him. _It couldn't be._

"I'd be careful, out there." His lips barely move. "I'm sure they'll stop at nothing to get what they want." He heaves. He didn't have long.

"Wait," I almost beg, "why are you telling me this? Why help me?

His eyes close gently.

"I'd ask you the same thing," he says faintly as if he is a world away. "Why help me? "Why do _anything _in here? Besides," he was fading fast, and I have to lean in even closer to catch his last words, "just because I come from a Career district doesn't mean I'm a monster."

And I realized how little I actually knew about Jonah. All I really knew was how unpredictable he could be. Everything else...I'd never know. And I actually regretted it.

His hand slips into the water.

The final cannon shakes the trees.

I know I should feel something. After everything that happened, I should feel _something. _But all I feel is emptiness.

Everything Jonah had said made sense, had made everything clear, even the cryptic words of the possessed spider-bite victims. _Kill the others._ Kill the others, not me. Eliminate my competition. Ensure my survival. Everything since that first dropped nest, the foods, the wasps everywhere, the spiders and who knows what else that happened in my favor, was to keep me alive.

Even when I hear, "Ladies and Gentlemen! May I present the victor of the Sixty-First Hunger Games, Fern Riley! I give you- the tribute of District Seven!" and roaring Capitol applause like thunder, all I really hear, all that I think is: the Gamemakers rigged it.

They rigged the games to get me.


	11. Chapter 11

~11~

The hovercraft.

It glides in on the breeze and the ladder cascades to my feet.

I stare at it, this foreign, artificial object, that's lost it's name and all it's meaning to me. In that moment, I realized that I had forgotten such things existed in a place that wasn't wet and cold, a place without constant fear and crimson blood. A place outside of the Games.

I slowly reach out, take hold of a rung, and an electrical current freezes me in place. The latter rises and I rise with it through the mist, Jonah's body sinking slowly away, water droplets from my jacket sprinkling earthward. Trees loom around me, their branches were skeleton hands that reached for me. If I could cling tighter to the ladder I would have.

Then everything is gone, a door closes below my feet, and a team of Capitol attendants, like flapping white birds, rush at me.

Instantly I tense up, back away but find a wall. I shrink away from their touch, but their hands are kind and their words are soft.

They gently lead me to a white medical room, sit me down. I watch in a sort of daze, as they take a needle and draw blood from my arm. I can't understand their words. It's just buzzing, like tracker-jackers. I see these people's faces, in my mind contorted with pain as stings swell up on their cheeks and necks and the image is so real that I recoil on the gurney, and their hands find me, their touch burns me.

The last thing I remember is a tube being inserted into my forearm, and the horrible, bloated faces of the medics disappearing into the mist.

~.~

When I wake, the room I'm in is empty, windowless, and doorless. My mind is fuzzy, and I can't quite remember how I got there, or how I was now wearing a hospital gown instead of my grimy arena outfit. Was I still on the hovercraft? Was I back in the Capitol?

I try to move, but can barely lift my head. Why was I so weak? I stare at the ceiling for what feels like hours, listening to the steady beat of my heart until the wall slides open and an Avox slips in holding a tray.

I know they don't talk, but I had things I needed answers to burning in my throat. I forgot about them enough eat some food, clumsily trying to work a fork until the Avox decides to just feed me himself, but afterwards I start to get annoyed. Where was everyone? Why was I being made to lie in this room for so long? I wanted to see Collin. Where was he? Why wasn't he getting me out of here?

I lay for a while longer, steadily getting more and more frustrated as my head cleared, and my body continued to refuse to work. At some point, sleep finds me, but without the drugs, so do the nightmares.

~.~

The second time I wake, sweaty, heart racing, there's a Capitol doctor jabbing another needle into my arm. This time, I watch the dark red of my blood spiral up a tube and pour like wine into a bag.

It scares me.

She sees my wide eyes trained on her and she smiles nervously. "Don't worry. We just need some blood samples." There is something she's not telling me. I can hear it behind her words.

"It's just procedure," she adds. "Nothing to worry about. Why don't you go back to sleep?"

I don't want to sleep. Sleep meant watching blood stain the oily water around Rowan's body, meant seeing Eva's neck snap by powerful hands and hearing the scream of the creature with the demon eyes. I was never going to sleep.

But I didn't have a choice. The moment the doctor mentioned sleep, I instantly felt a cold trickle on my other forearm, and felt myself go under before I could even protest.

~.~

The third time, my eyes open and I'm greeted with the Avox and food, and this time I can sit up. This time I can feed myself, and let my bare toes slide onto the cold tile floor. The Avox leaves me a stack of clothes, first points to a floor-to-ceiling mirror that's appeared on the wall to my right, and then to the far wall, where I could only guess is the exit. I bring myself to thank him, and then I'm left alone.

I take the clothes. To my dismay it was a fresh set of my arena outfit. As if I need reminding.

When I put them on, I noticed the differences. My skin was smooth and flawless, fingernails long and in perfect ovals, my hair was softer than it has ever been, and...and my chest...

I find the mirror. First, I see the haunted, wide-eyed face that was once my own, and there's a thinness that's never been there before, and my hips stick out more than they used to, and my stomach is like a cavity under my ribs. But then I see the lips, they had never been _that_ full. My figure; it had never been _that_ noticeable. What on earth did they do to my body?

But I knew. I knew of course, because it often happened to victors. I'd heard rumors. Sometimes seeing it with my own eyes.

They had altered me. Somehow, this seemed to add insult to injury. They'd already taken away my childhood, my life, my privacy, my dignity. Of course, my body was just something else for them to steal away.

I had become a stranger. Whoever Fern Riley was had died in the arena.

This was how I felt.

~.~

They were waiting in a big chamber at the end of the hall. All of them.

I walk slowly, like a sleepwalker. I see their faces emerge from the mist. Cameras stare at me. There's a burst of sound, and my little spritely stylist bounds over and hugs me tightly.

"Hooray!" Antigone squeals. "This is the best day of my life! I'm going to be so famous! All those saw teeth really paid off, huh? Really gave you an _edge,_ didn't they?" She's so overcome with excitement and her wit that she dissolves into laughter and has to let go. Merlin is just as excited; "It's all thanks so me, of course, who, without, you would probably have been a silly little lumberjack girl forever!_"_

Sanity comes in the form of the thin man who sits at the table. Who smiles-the first seemingly genuine I've seen from him-and nods his head at me. Collin stands up slowly, clasps both my hands in his, gently squeezes. And just like, a lifetime ago, when I received a similar gesture of reassurance from my brother-in-law before the reaping, it's all I need.

"We need to talk," I say. Even my voice sounds like a stranger's.

Collin nods.

"It'll have to be after the victor's ceremony, I'm afraid!" Antigone hops between us. "I've got _so_ much work to do, even with the amazing job those doctors did on you," she adds admiringly.

I gently exhale a breath and let Antigone take me. Without an ounce of will, my mind blank and elsewhere. I savored the moment, for I knew, the instant I lost the blissful silence in my mind, it would all come back. The horror. The loss. The overwhelming reality that I should be dead, along with everyone else.

Antigone takes me back to the seventh floor of the training center, and we're greeted by the electric duo, Lizza and Zazz. They are quite as excited as Antigone, and they get right to work preparing me for the victor's ceremony.

It was so surreal: the sharp contrast between here and the arena. In the Capitol, worries and concerns were trivial. In the arena, when things go wrong, you end up dead.

Antigone dresses me in a tight-fitting, metallic-gold gown with simmering lacy additions across my back. I'm puzzled at first by the odd design, but when I see myself in the mirror, it becomes very clear.

"I had this wonderful idea that, because it was sort of the theme of the games and all," Antigone says excitedly, "I'd design a dress representing your greatest weapon! Isn't it just wonderful?"

A tracker-jacker. That's what it was. And I hated it. But kept my mouth shut.

I wanted desperately to leave, to go home, to get away from all these naive, senseless people in the Capitol. I wanted to see great pine trees and wanted to breathe in the earthy smell of mulch and sawdust. All I needed to do was to get through these last couple of interviews and I could be left alone. I would finally be set free.

I'm brought down to a dark, musty room below the stage where the ceremony would take place. I can hear Caesar Flickerman's voice, remarkably unchanged. How could the world be so much the same when I had changed so drastically?

Thunderous applause booms above me. I can imagine my prep-team emerging and bowing energetically, followed by Merlin, then Antigone and Collin.

Despite everything, my mind and body still has energy to be nervous. My hands sweat. My plate begins to rise. Light blinds me. People scream with exuberance.

I vaguely remember sitting down in the victor's chair, exchanging a few words with Caesar, and then everything just goes from there. It's lucky I don't have to put on a show to get sponsors anymore. As I sit through the replays, I grow numb and senseless; watching everyone die for a second time. At one point, maybe it's watching Eva stab the District 2 boy to save Rowan's life, I stop seeing the images. But I can hear Rowan's voice, every word he said, and I can hear all their voices. Stamped into my brain. Permanent nightmares.

I eventually come around to notice something important. It was something you wouldn't have even noticed unless you'd actually been in the arena. Judging by the replays, the Capitol has deliberately glossed over the obvious advantages they gave me. Made it honestly appear like the nests were random, made it seem like I was some sort of root-finder extraordinaire, muted out the the words of the spider victims, skipped most of the conversation between the dying Jonah and I, and made it seem like it was my immunity, and my immunity alone, that was responsible for my survival. In a way, it was, in fact, the only reason I was alive, but that was just because the Gamemakers wanted it. Because they gave me the advantages to get me...no...to get my _blood_ safely home for examination, research, reproduction or whatever they wanted it for.

I wondered, was that bag of blood they took from me the last of it? Would they want more, and for how long? Horrible possibilities haunted my thoughts as well as everything else.

I'm relieved when the replays finally end.

And the crown that is placed on my head by the President feels hollow and undeserved.

~.~

That night, I'm so exhausted from trying to maintain a pleasant façade throughout the Victory Banquet, I collapse into sleep without even considering the consequences.

Later, Rowan wakes me, arms of blood creeping across his white shirt, wrapping his torso in a tight embrace as he falls face-first into a vast ocean. And ocean alive with golden wasps. Golden wasps with human faces chanting. Chanting. _Kill the others. Kill the others._

I stumble up and somehow make it out of my room.

"Collin," I gasp, gripping a door frame as my world swam before me. Collin, my mentor who never sleeps for reasons that have become very clear to me, is suddenly there, and I feel his arms catch me and hold my trembling body, supporting me. One of his hands strokes my hair. I bury my face in his shirt and burst into tears.

They're the first ones, I think, since before the arena. I'm shaking uncontrollably, and there's a horrible wailing sound which at first sounded so disconnected that it took a minute to realize that the noise was coming from me.

Collin takes it stoically, and doesn't say a word. What could he possibly say, anyway? That everything will be _alright?_ He knew as well as anyone that things were never going to be the same for me.

"They never said a word," I manage to choke out, "a word, about any of the tributes. They all just forgot about them."

"I know," says Collin gently.

"It wasn't fair, for any of them."

"I know," he says again.

"It...it should have been someone else," I finally voice it allowed, after thinking of nothing else since I was pulled out of the arena. "I doomed everyone else...because of what I had...that the Capitol wanted..."

"I know," is all Collin says. It is all he can say.

~.~

Caesar Flickerman stares me down across the seventh floor sitting room, with his unfaltering smile and leaf-green hair, and the pile of cameras and crew that came with him.

And me, dressed in a light dress like floating mist, sitting across from him.

"So the secret's out, eh?" He asks jovially.

I try. I try so hard to be the girl who last sat before Caesar, who was still a tribute and not a victor, who joked about a secret.

"No," I say, putting all my energy into the staged, good-natured alarm. "Oh, no, you don't think they figured it out, do you?"

Laughter is gentle and sweet.

"I think we all had _just_ a few hints." Caesar winks. "And, _wow,_ what an advantage that gave you! Tell us, I'm sure everyone is itching to hear how this immunity to the tracker-jackers came to be!"

It's hard to keep the quiver out of my voice, but I answer Caesar's questions as animated as I to present to the country that I was coping. Or maybe it was just to reassure the people back home that I hadn't gone insane.

"Tell us, Fern, for I'm sure you'd know better than anyone, Jonah Casella! What was it like, just you and him, so close to the end?"

"I-" I try to think. "I felt like...it wasn't going to be me."

"Oh, if I were you, I wouldn't have underestimated myself! There were a lot of people rooting for you."

"Really?" I say before I can stop myself. "_Me, _up in a tree, over _Jonah?"_

Caesar grins. "You had your secret weapon! I just knew, the moment I saw there was a nest up that tree, that you were going to make it! Jonah never stood a chance!"

For some reason, his comment gets to me. _They just assume that I wouldn't hesitate to kill._

"Well," I say steadily, "The bear kind of intervened."

"It sure did! And when you jumped, with that nest, oh! I think my heart nearly stopped!" Caesar nods to the invisible crowd.

"However, I'm sure we'd all like to know," his tone is serious, "there was definitely some compassion between you and Mr. Casella at the end. What brought that about, I wonder? Apart from-" He winks at the cameras, "-his obvious..._desirable attributes."_

I force a small laugh, and then the words. "I'm not sure, Caesar. At the time I-" I stop. The truth was complicated. Jonah's character was so mysterious, and I never knew his real motive for helping me. Guilt played a part in it, too. Finally, I find the right answer. "You'd have to be there, Caesar. Most of what happens doesn't have reason. I just did what felt right."

Caesar is pleased with the answer, and delves even deeper into the games, digging up every detail.

Eventually, he gets around to asking about Rowan, and how our friendship arose in the most difficult time in the arena, and I respond with the truth.

"It's obvious Caesar, why else? He was a part of home." My voice gets quiet, and I feel all of Panem lean in to hear. "That's where we were all trying to go back to, isn't it?"

With that, my strength leaves me, and I answer the rest of his questions with a plain, constant tone. _Just let me go home,_ I think, _Just let me go home._

_~.~_

Trees. Pine trees. Sixty feet tall as far as the eye could see. The familiar smell fills me up inside, and for a few blissful moments, I forget about the stranger that is me.

The reunion with my people is televised just like everything else, but I soon forget about the cameras.

My family is right in front of the crowd at the station, teary-eyed with happiness. I loose any restraints I may have held before, and run to them; my sister, Clave, sweet little Mimsey. I embrace them, cry with them.

For so long, I have been afraid. Of death, of never seeing those I love again. Maybe I will always hold onto that fear. Perhaps I will wake up every morning knowing that I should have died in the arena. But even though I am haunted-when I see May's shining face it's not hers but Eva's I see, and when a tall, dark-haired woman with two little black-eyed boys approaches me, softly thanks me and I cry with them, too, and how, whenever I look at my honeybees all can think is about is Jonah and his nickname- I am grateful, for the first time since I became the victor of 61st Hunger Games, that the heart that is alive in my chest beats on.

~END~

**A/N: **So, it's over! (or is it!) (um, yes. it is). Thanks to all my readers! Please, tell me what you think about this story in a review, and if you like it (you have read 11 chapters, that's gotta mean something!) you can show me by...oh, maybe...making your friends read and review? (that would be so amazing!) ^_^

Thanks, as always,

TTE


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